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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: The powerful military cyborg Ivan (who resembles a futuristic tank) is sent to a faraway planet on a mission both noble and horrific. He must save a primitive indigenous population by exterminating a human mining colony controlled by an uncontrollable and deadly infection. Ivan started life as a human, but is now both human and machine. First and foremost, he is a soldier who must complete a terrible, solitary mission. The conflict in this mission causes so much stress that Ivan's sanity fractures. Amid deadly conflict with the desperate human miners, even as he seems to be winning, he becomes suicidal, psychotic, despondent. The remnants of his human nature respond with the remarkable manifestation of a very special little boy. Ivan and the boy are not strangers--the boy is Ivan of his own past as a human child. As things go darkly awry, Ivan is left in unutterable solitude to ponder if there is any salvation for his new hybrid kind, neither human nor machine.

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine)/Far Sector SFFH, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2005

12 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [244 KB], eReader (PDB) [33 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [19 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [17 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [62 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [90 KB], hiebook (KML) [98 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [67 KB], iSilo (PDB) [15 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [20 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [57 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [28 KB]
Words: 5455
Reading time: 15-21 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

The transport wrecked against the surface of the fringe world. That was exactly what this one was designed to do, and Ivan wouldn't have cared if it had ripped to bits. He'd sensed it all right. The violent vibrations had registered fully, but the sensation had been more akin to hearing the rain pattering overhead rather than feeling it on bare flesh.

The elevating platform pushed his wide carapace up out of the transport's storage compartment until there was enough room for his legs to emerge. As one, the ten traction claws stretched toward the dark rich loam covering the jungle floor, until each of the legs had finished telescoping. They formed an evenly spaced umbrella ring out from the edges of his tank-squared carapace. He wasn't as large as a tank, more comparable to a sporty car. Instead of seats, the top of the carapace was crowded with weapon systems surrounding a human shaped torso. The carapace elevated again, this time under its own power. The gyroscoping stabilizers accomplished their purpose so that Ivan could stand on his two hundred and fifth planet and not give a damn. It was just another variation against the sum of worlds he had known. Ice, aquatic, desert, chemical wasteland, or pristine agricultural planet. What was another world to him? This one wasn't even particularly remarkable or valuable. His lords wanted its source of raw humanity nonetheless. At one time a lush vista like this one might have captured Ivan's attention. It would have been a world worth protecting, one that he might have considered for retirement. Now the terrain was just another factor in the equation used by his tactical program. Even that was a mere consideration. It wasn't worth pondering as a utility, let alone aesthetically. He wasn't here to explore the world or unlock it wonders. He was here to kill. He moved away from the pod to do exactly that.

Ivan's optics simultaneously assimilated all three hundred and sixty degrees. It was a perceptual integration that had taken him months to fully adjust to. That was hundreds of years past, a single biomechanical integration lost amongst a huge list. In the tick of a second, the jungle, the mountain range, the settlement, and the functional satellite uplink on the battered pod combined as a chain of images for the human half of his mind. In the other half they took up a tiny portion of his considerable storage capacity. Diagnostics completed electronic checklists for his battery life, launcher, laser turrets, flechette cannon and saw blades. His offensive capability was at an acceptable percentile. Not that he cared. The computer told him that there wasn't enough data to estimate his defensive capability against the probable threat. He didn't bother much with that either. In fact, he wasn't sure when the last time was that he had felt good or bad about anything. The boy was the one exception to his blunted sensibility.

Ivan's legs shambled forward picking their way over obstacles posed by the undergrowth. All the while his carapace changed elevation as needed, rolling, pitching, tilting, and tipping until he wedged past the gray trunks supporting the amber foliage. The settlement was at least a kilometer away according to the map on his navigational system. Less than half that distance was the man next to the six wheeled transport. Nothing else was moving on radar for at least ten kilometers. His sensors gathered it all in, atmospheric pressure, temperature, radiation levels, sonic vibration of the tectonic plates and the very scent on the air. The kaleidoscope of information funneled through his neural processor like water through a strainer. Only that which was relevant would be brought to his attention. One facet of information still eluded him. It was too far for the biosensor to read the man's electrical field. If the man had transformed far enough the change would be evident. Even that didn't really matter to Ivan. The confirmation would be important only for his records. His experience-honed premonition told him that the entire settlement had undoubtedly been infected.

He burst out of the tangled tree line toward the man. The soggy bog field was just damp enough to sink each claw half a meter deep. The gyroscopes were at maximum adjustment, keeping him under fifty kilometers per hour. The man didn't see him until he was almost there, the squishy splash of the ten-point crawl masked by the sucking hose pulling brackish water from the hole into a storage tub on the vehicle. The man looked up and his brown overalls separated at the middle. Ivan disengaged the silent saw and it retracted back into the front of his carapace. The dissection provided a dual purpose. His sensor whip slithered down sniffing at the man's entrails and comparing the results against the records. In a few seconds the biosensors had mapped the corpse, x-rays, microscopic analysis and the electrical imprint recorded moments before death. The information was cataloged, compared and crunched. The contamination was present though not enough for a complete transformation. The innards bore the corruption that had yet to erupt throughout the flesh. It didn't really matter what stages these people were in. They were beyond hope. They'd met the requirements for destruction. His targets had been verified and were waiting for Ivan to kill them.