The War Doll

A Short Tale from the POZ

San Martino Family Compound, outskirts of Pan Oceanic City

Aaron Copeland was a family man.

The kind of guy who took his wife and kids out for icecream and sodas at the local fun park. Who tucked his son and daughter into their beds every night with a smile and a kiss, before retiring to the master bedroom with his adoring wife.

Ask any of their neighbours in the residential tower they lived in and they would all tell you what a great father and husband he was. Never raised a hand against anyone they’d say. Gentle and generous to a fault, always willing to lend a hand to anyone who asked.

Which is why they would be shocked into stunned horror if they knew what he did to pay for that luxury apartment and easygoing lifestyle.

Right now Aaron was perched among some scrubby weeds not far from the beachfront, a long barrelled rifle tucked against his shoulder, right eye glued to the thermal imaging scope attached to the military grade weapon. The gritty sand under his elbows made a faint crinkling sound as he moved position, adjusting the angle to track his prey.

“Target identified” he breathed out softly, the words carried to the ears of his small team via the comms unit strapped to the side of his head. “It’s the kid and her nanny, alone in the house as expected”

The sand dunes around him were quiet in the warm summer night, only the gentle rumble of the surf against the sandy shore making any noise. It was close to nine in the evening, that strange middle ground when it was too late for the kids to be up but too early for the adults to hit the sack.

If he was at home, Janice would be making them coffee before they settled down on the couch to watch their favourite holo-shows.

“Copy that” came a quiet reply. That was Carl Anders, situated about thirty meters to his left, his own heavy sniping rifle watching over the front entrance to the beach house. He wasn’t a family man, not yet, but he kept talking about his future with Becky and Aaron reckoned there would be wedding bells soon.

“Control” came a third voice, questioning. “Is it go time?”

The voice belonged to Jenny “Jail-Bait” Connors, the young and talented Drone Jockey who ran their mechanicals. They also did double duty as the team’s Net Diver, hacking data streams and brute-forcing their way past security systems.

They were barely old enough to join the Freelancers Guild, at least on paper, but Aaron had a strong suspicion Jail-Bait was at least a couple of years younger than they claimed. He didn’t really care, since if they were good enough to hack their official Ident files to make them older then that made them old enough to work in his team.

“Anything visible from the Sky Eye?” he replied with a question of his own. The Sky Eye was a semi-rigid balloon drone hovering about five hundred meters up in the air, covered in a pitch black stealth coating that made it damn near impossible to detect. It was currently providing a real-time feed to Jail-Bait of the compound and surrounding area, better than a satellite link as it was well under the cloud cover that was common at this time of year.

“Nothing moving except for the security hounds” they answered. “They’ve been keeping to the same programmed circuit of the grounds”

Aaron took one last look through his scope at the house interior, observing the woman and child chatting in blissful ignorance in the well lit lounge room. The only other occupant was a stuffed animatronic bear, sitting beside the young girl as she pretended to pour it some tea from a plastic teapot.

The bear lifted the cup and took a mock swig of the imaginary contents, giving the girl a toothy grin.

Their intel on the house had been thorough but when it came to the target and her companions even Jail-Bait had hit an unbreakable wall. The kid’s name was Nani San Martino, aged nine, about the same age as his own daughter. He imagined the Nanny and the teddy bear had names too but they hardly mattered.

Thinking of them as anything but a target would lead to mistakes. Aaron was getting too old in his line of work to afford any mistakes. That was for the younger Freelancers, the ones who still believed they were indestructible. Or had bodies young enough to shrug off a wound or two.

His thoughts went back to the intel they had obtained. One of the main things that Jail-Bait could glean from past service contracts was the house had been supplied with a Fun Doll, which was hardly surprising.

Every spoiled rich kid in the Pan Oceanic Zone got their own private mechanical toy these days. They called them Fun Dolls, or Fudols for short, but they were hardly dolls. Most were fashioned to look like regular human beings, of any gender and size, sometimes with disturbingly realistic flesh and anatomy. Hence the ‘fun’ part of the name.

Aaron considered the pair he could see through the windows of the palatial beach house. The toy bear was probably the Fudol, built to resemble the kid’s favourite companion. An actual walking, talking Teddy bear that sat down to play teatime with its owner.

The thing was nearly a meter tall he estimated, covered in short brown material made to look like fur. It gave him the creeps but then he’d always hated stuffed animals. One too many adults shoving the hideous things at him as a child he reckoned, wondering why little Aaron ran crying from the room every time.

He shook himself and re-focused on the other occupant of the room.

The woman was the problem. From the thermal imagery she gave off the right kind of heat signatures to pass as human, yet the high-end Fudols could do that and more. They could bleed and cry and even piss in a pot if the design specs were good enough.

But she wasn’t a Fudol, Aaron was convinced of that, because Jail-Bait had discovered service contracts for a wholly different kind of mechanical doll. The kind of doll that sent shivers down the spine of any Freelancer who had to tackle one.

A War Doll.

Aaron had watched an old film once, made long before the Virus of 2020 reshaped the world. It was meant to be science fiction, featuring indestructible war machines hidden beneath the outer flesh of a regular human being. In the film, the killing machines had been terrifying, yet Aaron had seen real War Dolls in action.

Just one of the mechanicals had ripped his old team apart, with Aaron only escaping by the skin of his teeth. He’d hit the thing with three EMP grenades at once, the pulse taking out every piece of electronic equipment for thirty meters and leaving him half-blinded and barely able to walk.

He carried four of the pulse grenades with him on every mission ever since.

“Activate Nimrod” he ordered Jail-Bait. Whatever was inside that house, his team wouldn’t get paid unless he went in there and dealt with it.

A few scant seconds after his command, Nimrod went into action. It was the fourth member of his team, albeit a temporary one for this mission only. It was a type of machine intelligence, an entity known as a Limited AI running out of a quantum processor somewhere.

Exactly where in the real world didn’t matter, since its job was purely in the Network, the cyberspace realm of code and data. Jail-Bait was a decent Net Diver in their own right but Nimrod was in another league altogether.

The house lights flickered then came back on, the only visible proof that Nimrod was at work. Its part in the mission was scheduled to last for ten minutes, theoretically long enough for it to overcome the House AI and keep the whole residence under its complete control.

Ten minutes.

Nimrod’s fee for those ten minutes was nearly half of the amount that Aaron’s team was being paid for the mission. Limited AI’s were hellishly expensive to hire and the rates were charged per minute, one reason why it had been booked for a ten minute slot.

The other reason was more pragmatic. If Aaron’s team couldn’t finish their run in ten minutes they would probably be dead.

“Nimrod has the house” Jail-Bait affirmed in his ear. “The hounds are now switching to their onboard AIs”

Aaron pressed his eye to the scope, swinging it across the well manicured lawn that surrounded the beach house. He spotted two of the four mechanicals, pausing momentarily as the loss of signal from the House AI forced them into autonomous mode. While Nimrod kept a lock on their controller, the hounds would have to rely on their own onboard Dumb AIs.

Which would hopefully be about for ten seconds at best, if the next stage of their plans went smoothly.

“Drop the hammer” Aaron commanded Jail-Bait softly and the Drone Jockey grunted acknowledgement. He lifted his eyes to the dark sky as if he could see the weapons being deployed but he knew the effort was wasted.

The Sky Eye had been equipped with four launch tubes for Mjolnir Kinetic Darts, each of the weapons costing a small fortune in their own right. They dropped like thin metal javelins from on high, guided by Jail-Bait towards their individual targets until the onboard targeting arrays locked on.

He spotted them at the last stage of their descent, micro-charges exploding in the tail to boost their speed to hyper-kinetic velocity. Aaron saw the nearest mechanical hound jerk as the titanium penetrator pierced the armoured skull and pinned its head to the ground, turning the expensive security mechanical into so much scrap metal.

“Three confirmed” Jail-Bait breathed apologetically via his ear piece. “One moved under the building eaves at the last moment. I think we clipped it but it may still be active”

Aaron wanted to curse but they’d been lucky to nail three of the machines as it was.

“Keep watching” he said instead and got to his feet with hurried grace. “Two, we’re up”

“Copy, Control” came Carl’s easy reply. Aaron moved down the slope of the dune at a low run, sensing Carl from the corner of his eye heading on a parallel course. His partner would go in via the front door while Aaron entered via the rear.

A low wooden fence loomed ahead and Aaron grabbed it with his left hand, vaulting his body up and over like a professional gymnast. It took a lot of training to keep himself in shape after so many years but it was just one of the demands of his trade.

He landed on the manicured grass on the far side and kept moving, racing past a fenced pool and lounge chairs as he angled towards the rear doors. A security hound lay crumpled on the lawn to his right. The fallen mechanical didn’t show any signs of life as he ran past it, which was exactly the idea.

His eyes flicked to the brightly lit windows of the lounge room as he ran, seeing the young girl looking out towards the unlit yard. Other than the brief flicker of the lights, there should have been nothing yet to warn the occupants the house was under attack.

Aaron wondered if the kid had any idea what her parents did to earn the lavish lifestyle she led. The San Martino’s were involved in a lot of the underworld dealings of Pan City, mostly the smuggling and illegal chemicals trade. It made them very powerful and wealthy, which in turn led to why Aaron and his team were here tonight.

The rich and powerful should never have families. It made them vulnerable to some other slightly less rich and powerful people wanting to cause them harm. What their end game was didn’t matter to Aaron. All he knew was he was here to grab the kid and deliver her to a nominated address.

What happened after that wasn’t his concern.

The rear door opened as he reached it, letting him scramble inside the house. Without Nimrod in control it would have been a much harder and likely noisier process to get past the house security. It was dark in this section of the building, only faint guide lights at floor level providing any illumination.

It was also quiet, the silence settling over him like a heavy blanket, enticing him to think everything was going perfectly.

“Two, I’m inside” he whispered into his throat mike.

“Copy that, Control” came the response from Carl. “I’m in the foyer. Moving to your position now”

Nine Minutes.

“Control”

Jail-Bait’s voice in his ear made him jump, sounding like a shout in the quiet and dark surrounds of the house.

“We’ve got a problem” they continued anxiously. “That mechanical - it must have skirted the house without me spotting it. It just went in the front door”

“What?” Aaron gasped. “Two, did you hear that?”

“Yeah” he answered, confusion evident in his voice. “I shut the door behind me. How did it get through?”

“It couldn’t” Aaron snapped, wondering what Nimrod was up to. It should have sealed the door as soon as it detected Carl was inside. “Two, go look for the bloody machine. I’m heading to the target”

Carl grunted a wordless reply and Aaron got moving too. The plan had been for both of them to engage the target, not get separated like this. Yet there was no way they could let a mechanical hound get behind them, even one operating off its onboard AI.

They called the simpler processors and the artificial intelligence they created a ‘Dumb AI’ but that was only in comparison to a Limited AI like Nimrod. Some of the better security mechanicals were smarter than many people Aaron had known.

If they were lucky the hound would be damaged and easy for Carl to take down. If their luck was bad then shit was going to get real damned fast.

Aaron had an awful premonition that the latter was going to be the case. He nearly pulled them out right then, keying his comms to send the command, when he heard the softened reports of gunfire near the front of the house.

It was Carl’s weapon, the sounds muffled by the massive suppressor fitted to the barrel. It wasn’t a silencer - unlike the holo-shows, any gun still makes noise when the bullets leave the barrel. The best you can do is make them quieter.

“Two?” he breathed into the open comms channel. There was a tense moment of utter silence.

“Got it, Control” Carl replied at last. “It was limping so I had time to shoot the thing in the head. I’m coming to you now”

Eight Minutes.

Aaron moved like a ghost through the house, eyes constantly scanning the dimly lit corridors and rooms he passed through. From the outside the house had seemed a lot smaller, yet on the inside it felt like a mansion-sized maze.

It was taking far too long to reach the lounge where he’d last seen their target. He paused in a lavishly appointed foyer of some kind, the walls hung with framed paintings and the scattered furniture all made from real wood and upholstered in leather.

Bloody fancy for a beach house, Aaron mused worriedly to himself.

“Two, where are you?” he whispered to his partner. Carl should have joined up with him by now.

No reply. There was no sound at all, even the surf from the nearby beachfront completely blocked out. The house had been soundproofed, he knew that from the building specs that Jail-Bait had accessed. Those same building plans were not matching with the actual interior though and that was compounding his worries.

“Two?” he asked again. Absolute zip in return.

“Jail-Bait” he called their Drone Jockey. “Can you get any response from Two?”

“I’m still getting a carrier signal from his comms unit but he’s not replying” they answered. “Let me see if Nimrod can access the house systems, get a fix on his location”

“Copy that” Aaron said and crouched low on the tile floor, his weapon held ready against a shoulder, finger laid alongside the trigger.

Seven Minutes.

“Nimrod found Two” Jail-Bait announced, startling Aaron so much he nearly fired his gun. “He’s in the lounge room”

“Shit!”

Aaron surged to his feet, running through the house, uncaring of how much noise he made now. He burst through the last door and into a brightly lit room, skidding to a stop as he registered the scene before his shocked gaze.

Carl was sitting on a three seat sofa, eyes fixed forwards, his arms laid across the padded backrest like he was at home watching the Grav-Ball game on the holo-screen. The mechanical bear was on his right and the young girl was on his left, both regarding Aaron’s arrival with interest.

His partner had no expression at all, his face hanging slack and unmoving. A large blotch of red stained the centre of his chest, a narrow slit punched through the armour weave right where the heart would be.

“JB! Abort!” he shouted into his comms unit. They would know he was serious because he used the abbreviation of their Freelancer name. He only hoped the youngster had the sense to run as hard and fast as they could away from this total shit storm.

Just like he’d planned to do when something moved at the side of his vision. He spun fast, triggering the heavy rifle in full auto mode but he wasn’t fast enough. Half a dozen of the large calibre rounds tore through the woman’s side and then she hit him, hard.

=====

Aaron came to his senses as he was dragged into a leather upholstered chair, held upright until his eyes came into focus. The woman then took a step back, regarding him with eyes that were terrifyingly human looking.

She could have passed as human if it weren’t for the gaping wounds down her left side, the clothing and flesh beneath ripped apart by his rifle fire. Arcane machinery, glistening tubes and bilious green synthetic musculature pulsed within the body. He felt a wave of nausea looking at the ruined mechanical, standing there seemingly unaffected by wounds that would have had a real woman screaming in their death throes.

Aaron was amazed he was still breathing, wondering why the mechanical hadn’t killed him outright. As it was, he felt a grinding stab of pain from his own ribs with every breath he took. Probably a couple of busted ribs, despite the layers of armour weave and shock absorbing gel that protected his torso.

While the lethal machine seemed content to examine him, he ran his eyes over the room. He could see his rifle tossed in a far corner, with Carl’s weapon there too. The pistol he carried on his hip was there as well plus the thin bladed stiletto he usually wore on his left leg.

Carl used to jibe him about the narrow dagger all the time, telling him he needed to carry something bigger and broader. Something with ‘balls’ as his partner used to say. Aaron’s gaze drifted to where his deceased comrade sat, feeling a sense of profound despair wash over him.

There had been talk before this mission of retirement. Aaron suspected that was because of Becky. He wondered if his partner had ever told her the truth about what he did for a living. About the lives he’d ruined so he could splash the Pandas on their nice apartment and fancy clothes, expensive dinners and trips to the coastal resorts down south.

It was too late now. Becky would never know how or why Carl vanished from her life, only that the man who loved her was gone.

The girl beside the cooling corpse of his friend was staring back at Aaron, a strange tight lipped smile on her face. He had a nagging feeling the kid, their target, wasn’t as innocent as he’d thought.

“So what happens now?” he asked, directing his question to the damaged mechanical. “You kill me and bury my body in the sand dunes?”

“I am only programmed to defend the young Mistress” the mechanical nanny replied and flicked those human looking eyes towards the trio on the sofa. “The other guardian is the one who killed your associate”

“You’re the Fu-doll?” he gasped in sudden comprehension then looked again at the oversized teddy bear and the child. The mechanical bear met his gaze and Aaron felt something twist in his gut, like a knife blow from someone you had trusted.

Nothing about this mission or this beach house made any sense, but it hardly mattered any more. Aaron knew he was going to die here.

“So they made the War Doll look like a teddy bear” he mused aloud, his voice rasping as the pain from his broken ribs made itself known. “How fucking sick is that?”

“You are mistaken, Mister Copeland” said the nanny. “The Mistress was gravely injured in an accident three months ago. So badly that her body could not be saved. To keep the child alive she was placed into a modified Fu-doll, rebuilt to function as a cyborg to house her brain while a cloned body could be prepared”

Aaron couldn’t follow what the mechanical was saying, staring at her open-mouthed in confusion.

“I like teddy bears” the bear stated into the ensuing silence, its voice that of a young girl. “Mama said I could be a bear while they made me a new body to live in”

Aaron finally understood and the thought made his blood turn to ice. The nanny was a Fu-doll and the child-sized teddy bear really was a child. His horrified gaze moved to the young girl seated beside his dead partner. He recognised at last the inhuman intelligence that stared back at him from those artificial eyes, cold and glittering under the lights.

The War Doll lifted one hand leisurely and a slender blade slid outwards from the interior, the tip still stained crimson with Carl’s blood. His partner probably thought he’d been lucky, finding their target by themselves in the house. Right up until the moment the War Doll had stabbed him through the heart.

“Mister Copeland, I have found an anomaly”

Everyone looked in surprise as the house AI voice echoed around the room. Aaron had thought their ten minutes was long used up, but somehow Nimrod was still in control of the house systems. There was still a chance he might get out of this in one piece.

“KILL THE LIGHTS!” he bellowed and threw himself from the chair as everything went black. There was a crash as something heavy slammed into the chair he’d been sitting on then he was scrabbling on the floor, fingers desperately searching for the other item he’d seen amongst his scattered gear.

Aaron felt something grab his foot and then he was flung across the room, an involuntary scream ripped from his lips as he hit the floor to ceiling windows. They exploded outwards, only his armour weave saving him from being carved apart by the razor sharp fragments.

He slammed down hard on the paving next to the fenced pool, his ribs howling in fresh agony as the bones ground together. There was barely a second’s respite to draw in air to his tortured lungs when he saw the War Doll standing in the shattered remnants of the window frame, a cold smile on its lips.

“Did you think I couldn’t see in the dark?” the machine goaded him, a second blade sliding out from its other hand. It had the same voice as the girl, light and child-like, chilling him like no other voice ever had.

“I just needed you to be distracted for a few seconds” Aaron replied, his fingers working with a speed driven by pure terror on what he had managed to snag in the darkness. There was a small beep of confirmation as the War Doll surged from the house, bladed hands held wide as she rushed towards him.

He couldn’t have run, the War Doll was too fast for his frail human body. But nothing made from either flesh or metal can move faster than light.

It was on him when the four linked EMP grenades detonated.

=====

There wasn’t an explosion. They weren’t those kinds of grenades.

But for the second time that night Aaron had been bodyslammed by a damned mechanical. It lay on top of him, surprisingly heavy for its childlike size, forcing him to strain his already abused muscles to roll the inert body to one side.

As it toppled away, he felt a tearing pain at his waist. One of the long thin blades the War Doll had deployed slid out of his flesh, letting a pulse of crimson fluid splatter down his armour weave.

“Bitch!” he grunted and dragged himself to his feet, clutching one hand against his stomach as he staggered towards the broken windows. His teeth were aching and spots of light danced across his vision, an after-effect of being at the centre of the massive EMP blast.

Every active electrical circuit in the house would have been fried by the immense pulse of electromagnetic energy. A storm that swamped the mechanicals and rendered them into useless piles of junk. At least that was what Aaron hoped.

The lounge room was dark, the lights being fried by the same pulse that took down the War Doll. Aaron moved carefully inside, using the faint light from the windows to guide his steps. He found Carl on the sofa, position unchanged, the slumped shape of the bear at his hip.

Aaron laid two fingers against his partner’s neck, checking to see if perhaps he’d been wrong. There was no pulse. He’d been right after all.

“Mister Copeland”

A voice quiet and childish, yet it froze his blood and made his heart skip at the same time. He turned slowly, disbelief written across his face, seeing the War Doll standing in the frame of the shattered window.

Aaron screamed and ran, blindly and with no coherent thought in his head. He careened through the house like a drunkard, smashing through doorways, staggering on legs fueled by absolute terror. By sheer luck he blundered out through the front door of the beach house, swaying for a moment at the head of a curving driveway, the pale light of the moon shining down from a gap in the clouds.

“Copeland!”

The thing was behind him, moving into the foyer, eyes gleaming with that unnatural glow. Aaron howled and forced his body into motion once more, boots stumbling on the concrete paving as he flung himself fowards. To the distant street where lights glittered like a beacon, as if offering him sanctuary from the demon that stalked his heels.

Suddenly lights flared in front of him and he caught a glimpse of Jail-Bait behind the wheel of their van, skidding to a halt a bare arm’s length from him.

“Get in!” they screamed, eyes looking not at Aaron but towards the house. He flashed a look too, seeing the War Doll standing there as if waiting for something. Aaron didn’t know what but he was past all understanding. He wrenched open the van door and scrabbled inside as Jail-Bait threw the vehicle into reverse.

They hurtled backwards down the winding driveway, exotic palm trees flashing past on either side as the Drone Jockey wrestled with the controls. Aaron looked towards the house and saw what he had been dreading.

The War Doll was running at them, arms spread wide. When it caught them, as he knew it would, the machine would finish what it had begun.

“Take the wheel!” Jail-Bait yelled urgently and he realised they had been shouting that a few times already. He lunged across with a pain filled grunt, grabbing the steering wheel as his companion started tapping commands into a control pad on their wrist.

In the van’s headlights Aaron saw the War Doll jumping for them, eyes glowing brightly as it closed the final gap.

The Sky Eye hit them from the side, hurling the War Doll into the trees as it crashed like a falling star from the heavens. Aaron gave a shout of triumph and then the van was through the gates and onto the street, tyres squealing as he tried to control their headlong flight.

They hit a tree, caving in the back of the van while Jail-Bait swore like a gutter-rat and Aaron moaned as his ribs got another massive jolt.

“Are you okay?” he managed to gasp out to his young companion once they came to a stop.

“Better than you, old man” Jail-Bait grinned at him wildly and pushed his hands off the wheel. “How about I take over the driving now?”

They got the van moving, the back end giving off a grinding noise that promised some very expensive repairs would be needed. Not that Aaron cared, since the vehicle had been rented under an alias and was going to be trashed as soon as they could arrange it.

“The mission was a set-up” Aaron growled as Jail-Bait headed them towards the outer city. “Our intel was compromised right from the start, but I don’t know why”

“So what do we do, AC?” Jail-Bait asked him, panic etching their face now that the adrenaline-fuelled rush of their escape was past.

“We go to ground” he answered and borrowed the youngster’s phone. His own was a useless lump of plastic after four EMP grenades had toasted its circuits. From memory he keyed in the number for his wife.

It didn’t answer.

She always answered her phone. It was one of her little quirks. Why carry a phone if you aren’t going to answer it, she’d say.

He called it again. This time it went to voicemail and her dulcet tones asked him to leave a message.

“Jan, it’s me. Things are looking bad so I need you to grab the go-bag and take the kids to the place we talked about”

He hung up and met the eyes of Jail-Bait.

“I need you to drive by my place” he asked them in a tone that made the young Freelancer blanch.

“Sure, AC”.

=====

There were emergency vehicles clogging the street as they drove past. Aaron told Jail-Bait to keep going while he strained his head to look up at the residential tower. Smoke was billowing from the twenty-second floor as fire-fighting drones sprayed retardants into the shattered windows of his apartment.

He’d called Becky during the agonising drive to his home and her phone hadn’t answered either. Aaron knew she never would.

Jail-Bait had no-one at home they cared about, or at least so they said. Aaron wondered if they even had a fixed address, since the Drone Jockey had never spoken about home or their family.

They parked the van in an alleyway far from any surveillance cameras or drones, letting the dying vehicle finally rest. Everything they had loaded into the van was removed and Aaron spent some numb moments carefully wiping their prints from any surface they might have touched.

He felt numb all over, even the pain from his ribs fading into the background of a mind growing cold and sluggish. Jail-Bait took their gear and walked away in one direction while he turned and went the other way.

“Keep in touch, AC” the youngster called out and he mumbled a reply, not even sure himself what he said.

=====

The next few days passed in a blur for Aaron. He went to one of his emergency bug-out lockers and retrieved some cash, disposable credit cards and a phone. He also grabbed a 10-mil caseless pistol, one of the heavy caliber models that could fire rounds big enough to stop a charging elephant in its tracks.

Or maybe a War Doll, if the thing was still moving after everything he’d done to put it down.

He paid a street doc to fix his busted ribs and an arms dealer to sell him some Ceramite-tipped bullets for the pistol. Those armour piercing rounds were highly restricted and therefore horrendously expensive but Aaron wanted to make sure every shot would count.

It was three days after the abortive mission when he got the call from Jail-Bait. They wanted to meet up and he agreed on a small cafe near the docks. The Drone Jockey had found some leads on who had led the team into the San Martino disaster.

Aaron arrived a half hour early, shambling in and taking a seat at the back of the establishment, old habits hard to break even now. He had lost everything that once mattered to him, only a flickering flame of anger keeping him moving.

That anger was the only thing stopping him from taking the pistol and putting one of those expensive bullets through the top of his skull. If he didn’t stop spiralling into his own despair, that flame would go out and so would Aaron Copeland.

“Jesus, AC” Jail-Bait declared as they took a seat opposite him. He hadn’t even seen them come in, his brain huddling in a dark corner and ignoring the world around him. The flame was nearly gone, only a spark still glimmering in his heart.

“You look like you haven’t slept since the mission”

“Can’t think enough to sleep. Can’t think about anything” he mumbled and raised his head to regard the young Drone Jockey’s face. The kid looked frightened, or maybe excited. Aaron was too far gone to be able to tell anymore.

“Yeah, I get that” Jail-Bait answered nervously, their eyes darting around like they expected to be jumped at any moment. Aaron should have been like that too but he was past caring. If the people who’d firebombed his home had turned up right then, would he react?

Or would he let them put a bullet through his brain, glad the pain was finally over?

“I know who burned us” Jail-Bait said and Aaron regarded them dully, his eyes slowly beginning to focus on their young face. “It was the San Martino’s”

“What?” he gasped, the shock breaking him out of his stupor. “How would they have known about our mission?”

Jail-Bait grimaced sourly and Aaron already knew the answer.

“The San Martino’s hired us to kidnap their own kid” he breathed out, his head clearing from the fog that had engulfed it. “Bastards would have had ransom insurance on the kid and they would have collected every Panda too while we got the blame”

“It was more than that, AC” Jail-Bait responded, their voice quickening with excitement as they saw his own new-found energy. “But I need to tell you something first. Something you aren’t going to like”

Aaron frowned at the Drone Jockey in confusion, until he saw her.

The War Doll appeared in the entrance to the cafe, the sunlight from the docks beyond giving the machine an unearthly halo. It was dressed in a simple black dress, edged at the cuffs and collar with white lace like some kind of gothic Lolita. Her dark eyes glittered against the pale white artificial skin and the lips curled back into an approximation of a smile.

Aaron roared and threw back his chair, standing and drawing the pistol in one frenzied motion. Jail-Bait screamed too, the high-pitched notes piercing his awareness as she lunged across the table, slamming his gun hand down hard.

“It’s Nimrod!” Jail-Bait shouted and he dragged his eyes from the mechanical to stare open-mouthed at the youngster. “It’s Nimrod” they affirmed once more and slowly released his hand.

Aaron looked back towards the War Doll, which hadn’t moved from the doorway, that same eerie smile locked in place.

“It’s okay, we’re friends” the mechanical declared to the few patrons who were observing the strange encounter. “Just a case of mistaken identity”

Aaron dazedly put his gun on the table top, righted his chair and slowly lowered himself into it. Jail-Bait took their own seat and the charged atmosphere in the cafe returned to something approaching normal.

“Nimrod is the one who found out everything” Jail-Bait began to explain and gestured for the War Doll to approach. “He’s the best one to tell you, rather than have me balls it up”

Aaron laid his hands flat on the table, either side of the gun, watching as the mechanical walked slowly towards them. It knew he was on a razor’s edge, keeping its own arms loosely at their side as it approached. One twitch out of place and Aaron was going to see if those Ceramite bullets were worth the money.

“How are you Nimrod?” he rasped when the mechanical took a chair facing him, sitting beside the barely larger Drone Jockey. It laid its own hands on the table, mimicking Aaron’s pose, regarding him steadily with those childlike eyes.

“In a way, I’m not” the War Doll replied with a sharp grin. Aaron twitched towards the gun but he had barely moved before the mechanical laid a hand over his, forcing it flat against the polished surface with implacable strength.

“To be more accurate, Nimrod has downloaded himself over the original core programming of the War Doll. To put it simply, he cloned himself”

“So he’s riding you like one of Jail-Bait’s drones?” Aaron snapped, tugging his hand out from under the War Doll’s. He considered going for the gun but folded his arms instead, leaning back and giving the machine a calculating look.

“No. I am more like his duplicate, although in this situation I am rather more mobile” the War Doll answered. It leaned back and folded its arms too, giving him a Mona Lisa smile in response to his glare. “Now that the introductions are done, shall we get to the matter at hand?”

Aaron grunted his assent and Jail-Bait gave a crooked smile of thanks. For some reason, that made him feel a lot better about this meeting.

“The San Martino family are a small yet relatively powerful player in the transport business” Nimrod’s double began. “They have never been able to rival the Brackenridge Group or SAND, but nevertheless they managed to score some very lucrative contracts. Which made them a target for extortion, kidnap threats and even killing to stop them being rivals”

“One such incident occurred three months ago, when an assasination attempt resulted in severe injuries to their daughter, Nani San Martino. The damage was so severe they had no choice but to implant her brain and key organs into a cyborg body. This was intended as an interim measure only while a new body was grown in the clone tanks”

“Cloning is damned expensive” Aaron interjected uneasily. “Were the San Martino’s really that wealthy?”

“Few people are, Mister Copeland” the War Doll said. “The San Martino’s had been expecting their insurance to foot the bill but the company lawyers managed to avoid paying out”

“When did the claim get rejected?” Aaron asked. The answer that followed was pretty much what he expected.

“Two weeks before you were contracted to assault the beach house” Nimrod’s double answered. “However, the situation is not as simple as you think. We were hired to kidnap little Nani but that was not the real plan”

Aaron felt a deadly anger growing in his belly, a fire that had nearly fizzled out suddenly gaining fresh fuel. His family and his best friend had been killed because of what the San Martino’s had planned.

“Tell me” he growled.

“When you assaulted the beach house, I initiated my intrusion routines against the House AI” the War Doll began. “I had expected some resistance but it was a Dumb AI and it quickly fell to my superior processing power. That should have made me cautious but I admit I was too conceited in my own prowess, naturally assuming I would be victorious”

“They only had a Dumb AI operating their house security?” Aaron murmured. Jail-Bait nodded at him as he began to comprehend what that meant. Anyone of means like the San Martino’s would have utilised a Limited AI to run their business, including overseeing the beach house.

“Once you had accessed the house, I found an anomaly” the War Doll continued. “The real House AI had been concealed, using the Dumb AI as a front to lure all of us in. When it attacked, it nearly overwhelmed me. However it had underestimated my true capabilities, much as I had initially been careless in my attack on the house”

“So you beat it?” Aaron asked.

“Not without help. To be truthful, the House AI was close to subverting my own core. It had access to some truly dangerous code breaking software and I was less than twenty seconds from complete subversion when the miracle occurred”

“What bloody miracle?” he demanded, more harshly than he had intended.

“Four EMP grenades at once, less than twenty meters from the House AI’s own core” Jail-Bait said with a grin. “It was shielded of course, but you pumped out enough juice to hammer the House AI into rebooting”

“My own core was far away from the detonation” the War Doll added. “So I forced the network open and was already waiting for it when it came back online. It never stood a chance”

“I see” Aaron replied softly.

“I stripped the San Martino AI of everything it had” the War Doll told him. “I used its own control channels to download myself into the War Doll mechanical when it rebooted too. That took some time as the machine had its own sophisticated programming onboard”

“Hang on! Does that mean it was you chasing us down that bloody driveway?”

“Err, yeah” Jail-Bait confessed. “Nimrod was trying to get you to listen to it as it had something really important you needed to know”

“Oh” Aaron whispered and looked at the War Doll in a new light. “You knew they were going to target our families, didn’t you! You were trying to warn me”

“Yes, Mister Copeland” the War Doll agreed. “They came after me too, but they discovered my core processor is a lot harder to destroy than expected. I had already taken steps to ensure my mind is well protected from such crude physical assaults”

Crude physical assaults. Like firebombing a family apartment where his innocent wife and children were waiting. Probably wondering when Aaron would come home and resume his role as doting husband and father.

The fire inside of him sputtered, the darkness threatening to engulf it again. He closed his eyes, feeling the tears beginning to well beneath the lids, a bone-deep weariness settling over him like a funeral shroud.

“It still makes no sense” he managed to say at last, afraid to open his eyes. “Why go to such ends if we were never meant to grab little Nani?”

“Because we were never meant to succeed, Mister Copeland. Even the ransom insurance would never have been enough to pay for the clone that was being grown. To have paid for it themselves would have bankrupted the San Martinos. They would have lost everything”

Aaron’s eyes snapped open.

“What happened to Nani?” he pleaded urgently, desperately. “She was a cyborg in that stupid teddy bear, right? It should have been able to reboot once the pulse was over, wouldn’t it?”

Jail-Bait looked away, refusing to meet his anguished gaze. Only the War Doll would look at him and he could see the truth in the implacable face of the machine.

“Nani San Martino was unable to be resuscitated, Mister Copeland. She has been officially declared as deceased”

He lunged for the gun and had it halfway to his temple when the War Doll stopped him, those childlike eyes regarding him steadily.

“To end yourself now would be a terrible waste, Mister Copeland” it told him softly and forced the gun back onto the table.

“But I killed her, Nimrod! I killed a little girl!”

“Hush!” the War Doll snapped, pausing to glare at the other patrons. The few that remained suddenly decided to take their leave, which seemed to make the War Doll give a thin lipped smile. For all that it resembled a young girl, the mechanical had an eerie ‘otherness’ that radiated from it.

“The cloning contract would have crippled the San Martinos, Mister Copeland. I examined the agreement in some detail and there was only one way out of it. The contract could only be terminated if the person it was being made for died before completion”

Aaron had seen so many horrors in his life, some of them committed by his own hands, yet this paled all of them into insignificance.

“No matter what happened on that mission, Nani San Martino was going to die” Jail-Bait said sadly.

“The War Doll was there to make sure it happened, Mister Copeland. You weren’t the one who killed that little girl, you were only the weapon used by the San Martinos”

“And once the deed was done, they made sure the weapon was destroyed” Jail-Bait continued, “But they failed at that, didn’t they?” They gave Aaron a fierce grin and he found the youth’s energy strangely infectious.

“So what happens now, Nimrod?” he asked the War Doll, the fire inside beginning to grow, warming his soul with something dark and potent.

“Payback, Mister Copeland” the machine answered and the eyes glittered with what he imagined was a fire of their own. “The San Martinos tried to end me and I do not take such an insult lightly. I am forming a new Freelancer team and I want you to be part of it”

“Just the three of us?”

“There were only three of you before” the War Doll countered. “This time we’ll have brains, tech and muscle; the perfect triangle for a balanced team”

“Why do you need us, Nimrod? That War Doll driven by your software can do all three. Us meatbags will only slow you down”

“Perhaps” Nimrod conceded evenly. “Yet is not the chance for revenge enough to get you onboard?”

“It won’t bring my family back. It won’t help Nani at all if we kill her parents. I’ve lost too much to care anymore, but I guess a Limited AI can’t understand those kinds of things”

The War Doll narrowed its eyes and gave him a shrewd look. For something built to kill, it had been given some very sophisticated emotion simulators. He could almost imagine there was something alive behind those eyes, a creature that could truly feel like a human being.

“Maybe that is why I need you and Jail-Bait” Nimrod said in the same even tone. “Besides, if I leave you here, the first thing you are going to do is try and kill the San Martinos by yourself. It would be best if you let me handle the mission so it doesn’t get screwed up again”

Aaron let out a snort of bitter laughter. The War Doll had read him right after all. It had woken the fire for revenge inside of him yet he knew he’d die in the attempt.

“Okay, I’ll join your team, Nimrod”

He held out his hand and the War Doll lifted their own, shaking hands to seal the agreement.

“Now that you have signed on, I would like to offer you this as advance payment for your services, Mister Copeland”

The War Doll laid a cheap phone on the table between them and activated it with their thumbprint. At their touch the screen lit up to show a woman’s face, looking expectantly out at him.

“Hi, baby” she said and Aaron felt the world fall away from beneath him.

“Jan?” he gasped. “Is it really you?”

“Yeah” she said, her throat tight as she looked at him through the phone. “Your friend called me just in time. They got me and the kids out of the apartment right ahead of the kill team”

“Where are you?” Aaron demanded, unable to hold back the desperate need that filled him.

“Somewhere safe” she answered. “We have to stay out of sight until you help that friend deal with the problem”

“Of course. I understand” he said and felt as if a vast weight had been lifted from his soul. “I’m sorry I put you and the kids in danger”

“It’s okay, Aaron. I always knew being your wife was a dangerous gig”

She gave him a smile and panned the phone to show his two kids, happily engaged playing some kind of holo-game. The room looked like a motel room someplace, anonymous and impossible to identify.

“Gotta go, baby. Your friend said we need to keep the call time short”

Jan disconnected the call and Aaron stared at the blank screen until the War Doll reached across and picked up the phone. She had always been far more pragmatic than Aaron he realised. Doing what needed to be done while he was off playing soldier, keeping their little family going.

“You’ve got me, Nimrod” he conceded. “Whatever you need from me, I’ll give it to you. Just keep them safe”

“Understood, Mister Copeland” the War Doll responded and looked around the small cafe. “I think it is time we left this venue. Our discussion seems to have generated some interest”

Aaron followed the War Doll and Jail-Bait outside to where his new partners had a late model electric SUV waiting. It was matt black with dark tinted windows and the kind of bulk that hinted at armour layered under the paint work. It was way too flashy for his tastes but he knew JB had chosen the model.

Nimrod probably had cash to burn on whatever they needed for the mission. Which indirectly led him to a new thought about the War Doll.

“Hey, if you are a clone of Nimrod, what should we call you? Little Nimrod?”

“Little Nim!” Jail-Bait piped up, all smiles now that Aaron was part of the team. The War Doll grimaced at the suggestion and paused at the door of the SUV, giving serious thought to the question.

“I named myself Nimrod as a joke” the War Doll answered on behalf of the artificial intelligence. “It is an old slang term from the Northern Block, meaning a ‘dimwit’. Yet the original figure from the Bible is known as a mighty hunter, so I considered it a suitable name for my endeavours”

“That doesn’t answer my question” Aaron replied with a smile of his own.

“Then call me Belus” the War Doll responded.

“What does Belus mean?” Jail-Bait asked as they took the driver’s seat. The War Doll climbed into the front passenger side, leaving Aaron to get into the rear. He shuffled across to the central seat, letting him see the way ahead.

The War Doll twisted in its seat, looking at both Aaron and Jail-Bait. A child sized killing machine that terrified them both and yet it had saved their lives. Given them a purpose when everything else had fallen apart.

Had given them a mission.

“Look it up, lazy humans” Belus said.

The End

Author’s Note:

This was originally meant to be a story about a killer robot built into a teddy bear suit, set to guard an innocent young girl from her family’s enemies. As I wrote it the story morphed into something else - an origin tale about how a strange group of Freelancers came to be.

It is long winded and needs a good edit but I hope someone finds it interesting.

If I ever get myself organised I’ll write the main story, about how a killer robot, a drone jockey and a family man Freelancer take on the ruthless San Martino company.