Subterrene War 02: Exogene Read Free

it over the speakers when we were born at fifteen-equivalent—the hymn, a prayer known only by the faithful, our first lesson and a call to the faithful:
    “This is my Maxwell. It was invented over a century before I was born but this one is new, this one is mine. The barrel of my Maxwell consists of an alloy tube,encased by ring after ring of superconducting magnets. I am shielded from the flux by ceramic and alloy barrel wraps, which join to the fuel cell, the fuel cell to the stock. My Maxwell Carbine has no kick, my carbine has a flinch. It is my friend, my mother. My carbine propels its children, the flechettes, down its length, rapidly accelerating them to speeds ranging from subsonic to hypersonic. It depends on what I choose
.
    “My carbine is an instrument of God
. I
am an instrument of God. Unlike ancient firearms, the flechettes have no integral chemical propellant and are therefore tiny, allowing me to fill a shoulder hopper with almost ten thousand at a time. Ten thousand chances to kill. My flechettes are messengers of God. My flechettes are killers. The material and shape of my killers makes them superior armor penetrators. But my killers are not perfect
. I
am not perfect. My killers are too small to work alone and must function as a family. But I shall not worry. My Maxwell will fire fifty flechettes per second, and fifty is a family. With my Maxwell I can liberate a man of his head or limbs. With my Maxwell I will kill until there is nothing left alive
.
    “With my Maxwell, I am perfect.”
    It was then, at fifteen, when Megan and I met our first humans. Until that point the technicians kept us in atelier tanks—alive and conscious, fed information and nutrients through a series of cables and tubes. The tanks gave us freedom of motion so we could put movement to combat scenarios played out in our heads, lending our muscles the same memories fed to our brains. Fifteen-equivalent was our birthday, when we became the biological equal to a fifteen-year-old human and slid from the growth tanks to feel coldair bring goose bumps and, along with them, a sense that the world was both a hostile and a promising place, full of danger but also the opportunity for redemption.
    First steps were awkward. Megan had stumbled when trying to stand and crashed into me, sending us both to the cold floor in a heap. We giggled.
I’m Megan
, she had said, and I told her my name, after which we looked into a mirror and I thought,
She looks just like me—
skinny girls, with leg and arm muscles that flexed like pistons under gravity, and which I knew could be used to kill the human technicians around us in hundreds of different ways. They had hair. Our heads had been shaved perfectly smooth and Megan and I sat there, on the floor, rubbing the tops of them and tracing our fingers over the scabs where only a few days before, cables had penetrated, and the thought occurred to me that if I killed one of the humans we could take his hair, to glue it onto our heads just to feel what it was like. But the technicians were kind. They helped us both up, guiding us to the dressing area where they gave us our first uniforms, orange and bright enough that their color glowed under fluorescent lights; and the sounds—unmuffled by the gallons of thick fluid that normally surrounded us in the tanks—were enough to make me dizzy. I vomited on the floor.
    A new voice spoke through the speakers while we organized. “Glory unto the faithful. On this, the day of your birth, a choir of angels sings your praise in heaven, telling God that he should watch for the time when you join him, to sit at His side after serving mankind. This you
shall
do, in honor of your creators.
    “It is said that ‘all the earth shall be devoured in fire. For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language,which they will serve my Masters with one accord. From beyond the rivers the daughters of His dispersed ones shall bring offering. On that day I will not be ashamed