The Captured (free version)

The Captured

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Copyright ©2017. Adrian Kyte

Prologue

Earth year 2487

It was such a simple weapon. The idling flame remindinghim of an Olympic torch; quite innocuous with its wavering amber glowon the light grey walls and onyx junction boxes.

This time he knew what to do. This time there was notthe faintest scintilla of doubt in his mind. They were barely living,vaguely humanoid gleaming metal forms quiescent for almost a decade.Their consciousness – if that term could be used with anyscientific accuracy – had no presence in this godforsaken place. Hewas not a religious man but the word 'godforsaken' somehow seemedappropriate. Surely this was a place where any religious notion diedon first contact; now it all boiled down to code in an artificialsubstrate. Yet the machine overlords failed to see how this syntheticform was anything other than an improvement. How ironic, some maysay, that it was he who fought against them, their ideology. But hehad the means, the opportunity. And, he reminded himself, a realchance of success ... up until this point.

Still...

He released the flamethrower's gas, directed theblue-orange flame at the serried line of the unaware metalabominations. Watched their attendant cables melt and distend fromtritanium bodies and heads.

Was it murder? No. To be murdered you had to be alive inmore than just a Turin, Pantoli compliant sense, did you not? You hadto have been born, not captured.

After a few minutes he accepted they were not going todisintegrate. Of course there was a more obvious way – a nuke. Ahand-held antimatter device could destroy this entire compound. Butsuch densely packed structures would immediately be detected andneutralized; because the overlords were not stupid, they were notwithout their enemies itching to unleash every WMD twenty-fifthcentury technology allowed. The old-fashioned flamethrower, on theother hand, slow and inefficient. Who'd have ever guessed?

In one sense it was a shame, what he was about to do.This body had its advantages, not least the immense strength. Andsecondly there was something of an aesthetic appeal ... or was thatthe machine part of him taking over? His old biological form, for allits geneering, still held to some ancient sentimental notion of theideal. Now he remembered his old self as not much more than thejust-adequate-for-survival human; a man of strength and power seemedfragile and vulnerable, in memory.