Page 1 of Operation Iron Heart

True Love

Out of nowhere, a fleet of automatic PanAmerican drones sounded over the Alashan Gobi Desert, instantly covering the high plateau in a huge cloud of fine sand.

Dammit, thought Jack bitterly, if only these idiots had turned up an hour earlier, things could have been very different. Instead, their arrival now only intensified the catastrophe by hurling the surrounding dirt into the wounds of the injured.

The advancing troops of the PanAsian Front had rapidly transformed the plateau into a place of slaughter, and slaughter was the only word for it – the wreckage of destroyed tanks and anti-aircraft guns lay everywhere and among them, the mortal remains of fallen soldiers for whom rescue had come too late. Jack sharpened his senses to penetrate the yellow fog in which some human-hybrid soldiers from his unit were stumbling around as if trapped in an invisible maze. Even though their human bodies had been fitted with a whole host of robotic technology, they were still far more prone to injury than Jack who, as a full combat robot, had some advantages not available to a hybrid soldier. These included highly sensitive visual electronics implanted in his brain; they were more reliable in extreme situations than an artificial system and gave him reasonable visibility across the five-hundred-metre-high dunes, despite the manmade sandstorm.

It looked like he was the only one in his unit to survive this disaster, but this was more due to coincidence than his considerable military abilities. In this attack, however, none of them had stood a fair chance, whether they were a combat robot or a hybrid soldier.

Not for the first time, Jack wondered which knuckleheads in high command were calling the shots. It was bad enough that they were now recruiting humans to fight, and against their will, too, but to make matters worse, they were falling back on human instinct rather than using artificial intelligence, and increasingly using airstrikes instead of traditional ground fighting simply to make it more exciting for the clueless audience out there. Drone strikes may have always provided spectacular images but they made no sense when the strategy was supposed to be all about pitting man against man.

He hurriedly checked the internal and external sensors that showed him whether his two-metre body and any of its 120kg of muscle mass had suffered any damage. Visually and physically, if you disregarded his impossibly perfect physique, he was practically indistinguishable from a human. As a robot, he also had the advantage that virtually any component of his body could be replaced by a spare part, grown using biotechnology. Even the nerve centre in his head was replaceable.

The highly complex quantum processor, structured exactly like a functioning human brain, reported a slight burn just above his right calf. He’d been hit by an overheated sliver from a fragmenting grenade and the heat-resistant material of his fatigues had melted.

Nothing to be particularly worried about, thought Jack before moving off to look for soldiers more seriously injured than him who he might be able to help before it was too late. As he tramped through the mountains of debris, he heard the groans of his human comrades everywhere. Robots didn’t do that – they suffered in silence, as he knew from his own experience. Some of the humans were crying, even though before the mission they’d been pumped full of pain-relieving drugs that were supposed to suppress any human emotion.

Jack searched through all the human bodies on the ground for one specific man, whose life he had already saved once, and who he now called his friend. It was this man who had given him his human name, as Jack didn’t have a real name. Even though combat robots were built to have a unique human appearance, they only bore a serial number visible under a special laser. Hybrid soldiers also had a number in the same place that registered their physical data. Not knowing where to start looking for his friend, Jack activated his built-in scanner so he could read each soldier’s QR code, even through their uniform. He had a vague idea of where the man he was looking for had been before the attack; he was part of his unit and he had seen him and wished him a safe return at morning roll call. Later on, he had met him beneath the huge dunes where most of his men had gathered for safety, albeit in vain.

When he finally saw him lying on the ground, he initially felt relief, but a second look immediately extinguished this. His human comrade’s fatigues were almost entirely shredded and, even worse, not only was his left arm missing – a small problem that could have been fully remedied – but an enemy drone’s laser had cut off both his legs at the hips. The flesh had been cleanly burned and wasn’t bleeding, but apart from that minor positive, nobody would ever consider replacing a hybrid soldier’s legs. High command would write off the man as a total loss and dispose of him, whether or not he still had a chance of survival.

Jack, deeply affected by what he saw, took the man’s helmet off and scanned his vital functions. He was still alive, but unconscious, which Jack considered to be a mercy. Carefully, he took a syringe out of his medical kit, which was intended for far less serious circumstances, and injected the contents into the man’s faintly beating carotid artery, hoping it would immediately work against the pain and stabilise his pulse. It seemed to, as the man’s heartbeat slowed. “Hang in there, soldier,” murmured Jack, more to himself than the man.

At that moment, he heard a whirring sound behind him as a medical glider landed about fifty metres away. The two robots on board had neither clothing nor faces, just sensors that they used to scan the surrounding area. They were known to Jack and his comrades as vultures, as they didn’t turn up to help, just to collect any leftover bits for the spare parts store. They got out of the glider and immediately started their unsavoury work, throwing any destroyed robots’ limbs into a container and vaporising the other remains on the spot with a laser to prevent them falling into enemy hands. Injured hybrid soldiers didn’t fare any better; any who were capable of walking were herded together despite their injuries and ordered to wait by a large medical glider. Those who were too seriously injured to move were eliminated on the spot.

Wanting to spare his friend this fate, Jack picked him up and carried him to safety behind a destroyed tank.

Seeing the open doors of the glider, it didn’t take him long to decide his next move. While the two robots were looking elsewhere, he leaped on board with his injured friend and quickly strapped him onto the stretcher provided, aware that this was their only opportunity to escape.

He swung himself deftly into the glider’s pilot seat and locked the doors, logged into the onboard computer’s control unit and took off vertically before the two robots noticed. He entered the destination coordinates – five thousand miles to the east – by thought command. If he were to believe a brother-in-arms who had previously fled and contacted him in secret, that’s where he would find the only person willing and able to help him and his seriously injured comrade.

The desert was barely behind him before, as expected, he was noticed by Chinese border patrols. Jack activated the laser defence cannons and calculated a sophisticated evasion course that would prevent the patrols from locking onto his position. A secret code dealt with the invisible border wall of magnetic waves, allowing Jack to then switch to automatic pilot and turn his attention back to his badly injured patient.

He gave him a long-lasting painkilling infusion and then connected the patient’s circulatory system to his own; robot blood was similar to human plasma so he hoped that this would stabilise the man’s circulation and provide him with a supply of oxygen.

His patient’s eyes suddenly opened. “Where are we?” he asked weakly.

“Going home,” replied Jack, attempting a reassuring smile. “I’ve captured a medical glider and I’m taking you to someone who can help put you back together. You just need to lie still and do as I say.”

“Listen, Jack!” his friend rasped in a weak voice. “I know I won’t make it, whatever you try. But before I go, you need to promise me something.”

Jack nodded anxiously. Most hybrid soldiers he’d met in this war seemed to know when their time was up. “When I’m dead, you must find my family,” he said, clearly struggling with the effort to speak. “You must tell my wife what’s happening here. You need to stop these bastards from doing to her and my children what they did to me. And you need to tell her that I love her and that whatever happens, I will always be with her and the children. You know where they live, Jack, and you know what she looks like. Do you remember the first time you saved my life? You said you’d seen her in my thoughts when you connected to my overheated brain to cool it down.”

“Yes,” murmured Jack. The experience had been incredible and had completely changed him, but he kept that to himself. Since he’d seen this woman, how she kissed and loved her husband, nothing in Jack’s life had been the same. Maybe seeing her had enabled his consciousness to fully awaken, but this was something he’d kept strictly to himself, otherwise he would have been withdrawn from action and reprogrammed.

“Jack? You have to promise, do you hear?”

“I promise,” swore Jack solemnly, even if it might kill him to actually meet this woman. “But wouldn’t you rather tell her yourself? I can record it and play it to her when I find her.”

“Thanks, man,” whispered his friend in a trembling voice, closing his eyes briefly. When he re-opened them, he stared directly into Jack’s iris camera – an intelligent lens that every combat robot wore in its right eye, providing them with key information about their surroundings and also functioning as a recorder.

Jack focused on his friend’s face. As he spoke a last, brief message to his family, Jack felt an intense fear about what might happen, which was not a normal feeling for a combat robot.

If he were successful in achieving his goal, he’d have everything that made a human different from a robot – he would live, he would love, and he would hope. Everything that he’d yearned for since he looked into this man’s memory.

But what if it was just a beautiful illusion that could never come true?

He considered retracting his promise, but instead, he gripped the dying man’s hand. “You can count on me, man,” he said firmly.