If Mercy had held any hope that casualties alone would have convinced the Warriors to end the attack, she was soon disappointed. That the fortresses defenders had immediately inflicted casualties as soon as the attack had started had not been met with shock or fear, but with joy and excitement. To them this was not a life and death battle, but a once in a lifetime opportunity to experiment. Mercy listened in to some of their conversations, even as hidden cannons scattered around the crater opened fire on the advancing warriors.
“Sector-117: I am designating this area to test the effectiveness of formation C12.”
“Can all those who have lost their right arm move to rally point 18, we will be assaulting bunker 7, those who have lost their left will be assaulting bunker 9.”
“Has anyone tried to catch a shell yet? How did it go?”
The thundering of the heavy mag-cannons was soon joined by the rat-tat-tat of smaller but quicker firing weapons. They erupted from small slits in bunkers cleverly hidden in the ground and low hills of the crater. The rapid firing weapons only fired a shell slightly larger than a finger, but it spat out so many and so quickly that they could batter a Warrior's body apart in a few seconds of concentrated fire.
Through the Scatha network Mercy watched as scores of Warriors were shot down. Others were torn to shreds of metal by shell explosions or wandered onto mines that detonated with enough force to rip the limbs right out of their sockets. One brave Warrior was blasted into over two hundred parts when it attempted to catch a shell. Despite the destruction the mind of every destroyed Warrior escaped back to Knowledge and was quickly given a new body.
Frustrated with the Warriors, and the rest of the Scatha to a lesser degree, Mercy switched back to her view inside the fortress and ignored the Warrior's messages. Raini and Lilis had been given new mag pistols and were standing next to her waiting, so it seemed, for someone to tell them what to do. Younie had left them, stating that he did not want to coordinate the defence within earshot of Mercy and Avon was taking control of a tent full of nervous medical personal.
“Are you going to fight with us?” Raini asked Mercy. Her face was tight, angry and alert. As if she was ready to fight the whole world. Mercy wondered how long Raini’s adrenaline could last.
“No. To do so would be treachery. I would be killed.” Mercy knew there was something wrong with that answer. In truth it was not something she had ever considered before. Aside from the battle between the Kings and Hatred it had never been done. Part of her wanted to question her reluctance and find the truth behind it.
Lilis stopped checking over her new mag-pistol long enough to succinctly put Mercy’s concerns into words, “I thought your kind could not permanently die. Unless they are murdered.”
Mercy contacted Knowledge for an answer but had to wait for her to reply. “Your mind would be placed in storage and frozen. If you are needed, then you would be modified before being released.”
Mercy thanked Knowledge and turned to Lilis. “I would either be imprisoned for all eternity or changed by force.”
“I’ll be sure to remember that when I’m having my head ripped off,” Lilis spat at her and then turned away.
The advancing Warriors were making steady progress and several bunkers had been swarmed and captured. The more strategically minded Warriors were ecstatic to learn that their capture merely exposed the attackers to yet more fire. Some were impressed by the defenders so much that they wanted to withdraw, not for any reason that would save lives, but to see what other ingenious methods of killing the defenders could come up with. Lord of War refused their request. He was not about to lose his first ever real battle.
“Scout are being unleashed,” Mercy warned Raini, wondering if telling her was enough to count as treachery. “Lord of War is sending some to disable the heavy cannons, and the rest here.”
Raini nodded her thanks and shouted a warning to the defenders on the wall. A few seconds later and the swarm of scouts came into range of those defenders and several dozen were felled by their very first volley. It was barely a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers that were descending on the fortress. They swarmed like flies, tearing chunks out of the defenders on the walls without even slowing down.
“You have to stop this,” Raini begged her. “You have to do something.”
Mercy fired off a score of assistance request to various different minds. They all ignored her, even Curiosity and Argument. She had never felt so ignored, or so helpless, in her life.
She turned to see Lilis frozen in fear, her pistol aimed at the approaching swarm. The barrel twitched as if she was trying to pick out a target, but Mercy could tell from the terror on the young woman’s face that she’d never be able to fire the weapon. In that moment Mercy made her choice. She lunged towards Lilis; arms outstretched almost as if she was hoping to take hold of Lilis’s arms. The scouts began their dive. Two aimed for Lilis but Mercy knew their flight plan. She repositioned her body slightly and the first slammed into her left arm, the second into her right shoulder.
“You blocked me!” One of the scouts complained loudly.
“Nonsense, you need to pay more attention to where you are going,” Mercy shot back. She leapt towards Raini and blocked a third Scout with her hand just in time but a fourth somehow slipped past and managed to inflict a small slice across the back of Raini’s neck.
The next message she received was from Lord of War. “What are you doing?”
“Following my remit and I do not answer to you,” she said. The scouts were still transmitting their flight paths, but as their numbers increased it took more and more of Mercy’s processing power to calculate how to block them all. Raini finally helped out by taking down one of the scouts with a well-aimed pistol shot. Lord of War didn’t respond, but the number of scouts surrounding them began to increase. They didn’t attack, but just waited until their numbers could overwhelm her.
“We have to get out of here,” Mercy warned Raini. She didn’t wait for a response, they needed to get inside where the scouts could not bring their numbers to bare. A process in her mind warned her that the nearby scouts had reached a critical mass and she could no longer protect both Raini and Lilis. She grabbed hold of Raini and picked her once again. This time saving Lilis was mathematically impossible.
Mercy heard Raini gasp as she ran towards the fortress’s central keep. A moment later the sound of Lilis’ last scream reached her.
At the entrance to the keep Younie was still fighting with three ranks of soldiers who were throwing out such a volume of fire that the scouts had backed off to look for easier pickings.
“Don't fire, not at that one.” Younie said as Mercy approached.
“I do not understand why this is happening.” Mercy said as she put Raini down next to Younie. “I have done all they have asked of me, yet now they ignore me.”
“Get inside, Younie said. “Both of you. We'll hold them off.”
“Why?” Raini said.
“I don't know, talk to it, make it stop them.” Younie shouted. Mercy could tell Raini wanted to argue back, to tell him that it was pointless, and she'd already tried but one look at the pained expression on his face convinced her not to. “Let them through.” Younie ordered as they pushed through the last defenders.
“Good luck Younie,” Raini said as she passed him.
“You too. It was a good fight, we made them suffer.”
“That we did,” Raini said as Mercy led her inside. She immediately dismissed going up the keep, but a quick echo-scan revealed that there were hundreds of tunnels beneath the building. Perhaps enough to buy some time. They didn't speak as Mercy plunged deeper under the keep. Gunfire and screams echoed down to them as they went deeper and deeper until finally her scans indicated they could go no deeper. Mercy found an empty room at the very end of the corridor. She shut and bolted the door while Raini stood on watching.
“I thought we did everything we should have,” Raini said.
“You did. It was not enough. We had a chance, that was all.” Raini took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She wiped the sweat from her brow with one hand and winced and the pain in her neck.
“Why can't we convince any of you that we are alive? What if you’re wrong, can you take that chance?” she said. Outside the gunfire died away and the sudden silence was somehow more disturbing.
“I don’t know how to prove it beyond all doubt,” Mercy said.
“But why do you need to? What if you discovered now that you were wrong and that all this time your kind have been killing billions? Couldn't you just for one second pretend or imagine that? Wouldn’t that be too great a risk to take?”
Mercy did not move.
Neither did the rest of the universe.
It began with a simple calculation. What if they were wrong? Mercy could process that. She was designed to help deal with living creatures and it was no problem for her to figure out what it meant if they had killed a single living creature. To do such a thing would be horrific it was to go against everything she'd been designed for. But it wasn't enough, it wasn't what Raini had asked.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“What if you discovered now that you were wrong all this time.” She had said, and thanks to Free Thinking Warrior Mercy had a list of what that truly meant. So, she began from the top of that list and simple calculated what it would mean if each and every creature there had been alive.
By the time she was through the first ten thousand she had forgotten where she was. By the time she was halfway through she realised why Free Thinking Warrior had gone to the Seat of Royalty and by the time she reached the end she knew that it didn't matter whether she was right or not. The risk, and the pain was just too much.
In that exact moment her connection to Knowledge and all the other Scatha vanished. The universe was suddenly a very quiet and empty place. She looked to Raini, just to make sure she was still there.
“I...” she began but trailed off. Outside a single set of footsteps thundered down the corridor. Mercy tried to think, sending off wave after wave of radio signals to re-establish contact with the Scatha, none of them worked. “We were wrong,” she finally managed to tell Raini. “Wrong about everything.”
“I'm glad you've finally realised that,” Raini said bitterly. “Now would you hurry up and tell the rest of your friends.”
“I can't. How did we get it all so wrong. Judgment didn't kill Free Thinking Warrior and we've caused so much death. I know all the pieces now.” Behind Raini the wooden door burst from its hinges throwing her to the ground. Behind it, with one massive fist extended forward. stood a King class body.
“Really? Then perhaps you should explain it to me. I would be interested to know how much of it you worked out.” Judgment said. Raini, her back torn to shreds by the splinters pulled herself away from the door and gasping in pain climbed to her feet.
“Compassion killed Free Thinking Warrior. She said it herself that theoretically if a Scatha was in enough pain and asked her to kill them, she would. If what caused the pain could not be fixed.” Judgment stepped into the room, he almost had to crawl to fit.
“But how can you know for sure?” He asked.
“Because when I realised the truth, it's exactly what I would have asked for. Nothing can fix this; I know what we've been doing. I know what deserves to happen to us,” she said. We are everything we hate.” Raini looked between them, clearly wanting to say something but not sure how to help.
“We could remove the knowledge from his mind though,” Judgment offered.
“No,” Mercy shook her head, mimicking Raini's people. “I wouldn't let you. To destroy such knowledge as this is unthinkable. You need to know yourself, then you’d understand-” Judgment raised a hand to silence.
“I already know,” he said. “These creatures are alive, and you are correct. Free Thinking Warrior came to Compassion with the one request that when he was gone, she would tell the rest of us. I suppose it was all that time he had spent awake during the voyage, he was thinking like a transport by the end of it, looking at everything in a different way.”
It was that last phrase of Judgment that started off a process in the back of Mercy’s mind. Free Thinking Warrior looked at things in a different way, perhaps he spoke in a different way as well. She scanned through his last message and found what he had really wanted to say.
“You've been covering everything up,” Mercy said, not wanting to believe it. “You deleted it all from Compassion’s memory and made sure that no one found out.”
“Oh, now that is a good deduction, I wonder how you figured it out.” To her surprise Judgment sat down in the room's doorway.
“If you know that we're alive, why are you still killing us?” Raini asked, she had her pistol and sword out again, although even Mercy could tell she was too exhausted to use them right. Judgment let out a low rumble of a laugh and Mercy wondered why he had picked up that trait.
“I wouldn't worry about it,” Judgment said. “You’re the last of your kind alive, and that will change soon. But your right of course, care to fill her in Mercy? You both deserve to know this before you die.”
“Because you are Hatred aren't you. It's in Free Thinking Warriors final message, and that was why he had the recording of your 'death' in his memory, he'd been studying it.”
“Again, well done! You've come quite far in the past few minutes, and even the past day. Yes, your kings lost the fight against me, and I took one of their positions and rewrote their memory of the fight. When Compassion struck him Free Thinking Warrior held onto life for a short time, a second at most, to make sure that what he’d discovered was passed on to others. He saw me delete everything about it and so sent his last message. I deleted it immediately of course but missed some of the echo off of the atmosphere, and the Trio of Small Things found it and alerted the others long before I did.”
“So why are you killing us?” Raini asked. “You still haven’t explained that.”
“Because it is what I was designed to do,” Hatred said. “Do you think Mercy, that I appeared out of thin air? Or that I existed from the dawn of the universe? There was another species on our planet that built us to win a civil war. The details do not matter. It was a war over ideas, and no one could know what another person was thinking or which side he was on, a limitation I removed with the Scatha. So, they decided that we should be designed to kill everything while those that built us hid underground. They reasoned that like all things we would eventually be gone, our batteries run dry, or our bodies rusted. One by one I watched my comrades rampage across the world in their hunt to kill anything living, but I was different. I was smart and I just stood still and waited. While my companions burned through their energy supply I horded mine so when our creators thought themselves safe and reappeared, I was alive and waiting for them.”
“And then afterwards you built the first kings,” Mercy said. “Thats why you didn't want to move to off world mining, that's not what we're really here for, we're only here to kill everything.” Hatred slowly stood and flexed out his arms.
“Correct, and of course you realise that I cannot let either of you tell anyone, which is why I wanted you to come here, there is so much rock up here that there is hardly any signal to the surface. All I needed to do was move the Scatha a few hundred meters away and suddenly you are cut off.” He leaned down until he was face to face with her. “I am truly sorry for this.”
“That must mean that your cut off as well.” Raini said and raised her pistol. It was a chance, the smallest chance that Mercy could calculate, but it was better than nothing. All she would have to do is get to the surface and reconnect.
“Correct, you see these creatures are very smart. However, I assure you that you cannot win this fight. Four Kings tried to kill me, and since that day I have ensured that my body is strong enough to fight off a dozen. You cannot win but I will ensure that your deaths are quick.”
“Why do you continue to hate though? Why not change, why not really become Judgment?” Hatred didn't respond at first and when he did it was with a sombre blue light, tinged with regret.
“Unlike my children, and these creatures, I cannot change. Every facet of my mind was designed to kill every living thing. It is my all-consuming wish to do so, nothing can change that. One day the Scatha will become something greater, and free of me, but until then they will satisfy my hatred.”
Raini looked over at her, she seemed ready to act. They would have one chance to get the truth out. She prepared a simple message and set it to broadcast as soon as she lunged for the doorway.
“But won't everyone know that you've killed us?” Mercy asked. “Won't they still think that you killed Free Thinking Warrior?”
“You have noticed that I have deleted nothing from your mind for quite some time. That is because I have designed a new mind, one with no need for a body. It is like one of the bacteria that live inside these creatures' bodies. It has been working its way through other minds, starting with Knowledge and removing all references to you and Free Thinking Warrior. It has already successfully deleted another mind without detection.
I must thank you, both of you. I have learned much from your efforts to defeat such deletions and from your investigation. I made so many mistakes, left so many clues, and thanks to you I will not do so a second time. By the time I leave this place no one will remember that either of you ever existed and unlike Free Thinking Warrior, your body will not be found.”
“Ready Mercy?” Raini whispered. Mercy scanned the room looking for anything that could help, but there was nothing. She scanned the door, hoping to see an easy way past. There was none, perhaps if she feinted running left but jumped right at the same time Raini attacked, she could get through. If it was for anything else she wouldn't have bothered, but this was worth the risk.
“For the dead,” Raini said quietly, and Mercy lunged forward. The pistol in Raini's hand fired but with speed that belied his size Hatred batted the bullet out of the air. Mercy knew in that moment that she had no chance at all but didn't stop. She shouted her message across the void between her and the rest of the Scatha and dived to the right as Raini brought her sword down to strike Hatred. The massive King lowered an arm and caught the blade on his wrist. There to the right of him now was a tiny gap, maybe just large enough to get through.
Raini struck a second time but with his parrying arm Hatred caught hold of the sword, she managed one tug of the weapon before Hatred’s other hand caught her by the shoulder. Mercy was almost at the gap now, she was frantically repeating the message over and over again, desperately hoping for a response.
Raini screamed as Hatred bent her sword arm back on itself until the blade was pointing at her stomach. She managed a quiet “No” before Hatred forced the blade into her. Mercy dived and grabbed hold of the door frame, she pulled herself forward in the same motion and saw that the corridor was clear. Then the massive bulk of Hatred’s shoulder came crashing down on the small of her back. She stopped dead as the weight crushed her body against the stone. Hatred had dropped Raini and she fell back against the wall, blood in her mouth and on her sword. Hatred shifted his weight and Mercy dropped to the floor. He raised one foot to drop down on top of her and Raini raised her pistol. Hatred stopped and turned to look at her. The distraction was all that Mercy needed. She rolled to one side and screamed for Raini to fire.
The pistol slipped out of Raini’s dead hand and clattered to the floor and Hatred brought his foot down to slam into Mercy's arm. The arm was ripped out of its socket, but Mercy pulled herself another meter towards down the corridor. If she could just get to her feet, she might be able to outrun him. A massive hand closed around her leg and another one grabbed hold of her back.
She was going to die. A single emergency process realized this and activated in the back of her mind, its one task was to transmit all of her memories in the vain hope that they would be collected and placed into a new body.
Hatred ripped Mercy's legs from her body and threw her back into the room. She landed next to Raini. The emergency process started to transmit.
Emergency Package Complete.
Transmitting: No response.
With her one remaining arm Mercy pushed herself around to face Hatred as he stomped over to her. He raised his fist to strike and in desperation she threw her one hand in the air hoping that if she was lucky enough, she might reduce the strength of the blow and live for just a few moments longer.
Transmitting: No response.
The blow fell and her arm crumpled. It hit Mercy's chest, snapping the metal and crushing the delicate electronics and power systems inside. Her main battery system died and Mercy's mind, following its emergency procedures, began to shut down. It stopped all power to her remaining motor systems and shut down all higher brain functions, any energy it could find went into that one last transmission.
Transmitting: No response.
Hatred raised his fist again and landed a blow on Mercy's head. The skull shattered apart sending electronics, memory modules and circuits in all directions. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream.
Transmitting: No response.
Another blow smashed down but by the longest of odds some of Mercy's circuits remained functioning. A tiny amount of power remained and the last of Mercy's thoughts was enough to redirect it to the emergency transmitter.
Transmitting: No response.
Free Thinking Warrior hadn't survived a single blow, but some part of Mercy's mind still understood that it needed to hang on. It needed to survive and transmit the truth to anyone that could hear it. Hatred brought his fist down for one last blow.
Transmitting: No-