by Isaac Hooke
Rade released him, and fought his way forward.
Bender moved slowly behind him, barely fending off the spiders that attacked him. He didn’t even react when the Teppakhan surged forward—Rade swung his stingray backward, and let off a shot that hit home. The big creature shrieked and backed away, curling up behind its minions.
“Bender, I want you to switch control of your mech to your AI,” Rade ordered.
Bender didn’t resist. “Roger that.”
Bender’s mech abruptly straightened as Alfred took over, and finally fought back with real effort. Soon Alfred was at Rade’s side, and together they bashed and fired their way forward.
They reached the tunnel and Pyro took point. Rade followed, with Bender’s mech bringing up the rear. Tahoe clambered onto Valjean, and resumed his position in Rade’s passenger seat.
They continued forward, leaving a trail of dead spiders in their path, until they reached the entrance and burst into the bright sunlight. They escaped via the path they had previously trampled through the undergrowth, moving away from the rocky outcrop and the nest.
The creatures didn’t pursue past the entrance. Some emerged, but the sun apparently burned them—if the smoke rising from their carapaces was any indication. Those in the forefront quickly retreated into the shadows of the tunnel, their mandibles snapping at the empty air in frustration, chittering wildly.
The outcrop receded until it was lost to the foliage on the horizon. The squawks and chitters faded. The only sound remaining was the thud of those big metal feet, and the breaking of branches.
Rade glanced at Jiang, who yet sat in Pyro’s passenger seat in front of him. Her cheeks were wet.
“Are you going to be all right?” he sent Jiang.
She shook her head. “She was the last member of my platoon. I’m not all right. I’m never going to be all right again.”
None of us will be.
22
Rade gave the container to Waldo, who worked on integrating the element with the Slipstream generator. He promised to have something within eight hours.
Meanwhile Rade and the others returned to the rooftop, where they passed the time in stunned silence.
Rade had emerged from his mech, as had the others, but he had been too weary to remove his jumpsuit. He wasn’t the only one.
He went to Jiang, who sat alone near the perimeter of the dome in her suit. She was staring across the city, toward the northern wilderness beyond, where they’d left Chow.
He sat down beside her, and wrapped his arm assembly over her back.
She glanced at him, and laid her helmet against his shoulder before gazing into the wilderness once more.
“Why did we want to leave so badly?” Jiang said over a private line. “Why couldn’t we just have accepted our lot? And stayed here? Chow would be alive now. We don’t even know if the alien will be able to use the element we recovered.”
“Waldo can use it,” Rade said. “And yes, you’re right, she would be alive if we stayed. But she gave her life so that the rest of us would have a chance to go home.”
“Don’t give me that ‘she’s a hero’ bullshit,” Jiang said, lifting her helmet. “She died for nothing, and you know it. Those fucking things dragged her off the mech. She had no chance. Her death didn’t buy us time. It didn’t save any of us. It made no difference to the mission. It was for nothing. And that’s what’s so maddening about it.”
Rade didn’t know what to say to that, because the truth was, Jiang was right. So instead, he shifted topics. “Even if we stayed here, and ‘accepted out lot’ as you say, there’s no guarantee those creatures wouldn’t have attacked at some point in the future. Or when we decided to explore that cave at a later date.”
“All I know is, if we hadn’t gone, she’d still be alive, right now,” Jiang said. “That brute of yours killed her.” She nodded at Bender, who was sitting on the far side of the dome, staring at the skyscraper directly across from the rooftop.
“You can’t blame him,” Rade said. “He blames himself enough as is. He’s broken. He’s never going to recover from this.”
“As if I am,” Jiang said. “Your friend should have insisted she stay behind.”
“If anyone is to blame, it’s me,” Rade said. “I’m the one who allowed her to remain in the passenger seat.”
“No, I mean, before we left,” Jiang said. “She should have stayed here, in the building.”
“You know she would have never agreed to that,” Rade told her. “She’s a soldier, like yourself. She lived to fight. And she wasn’t going to leave your side.”
“Then you should have ordered us both to stay behind,” Jiang said.
Rade nodded slowly. “So, you’re blaming me after all. Maybe that’s a good thing. As the leader, the responsibility is mine.”
She inhaled deeply. “No. I’m not blaming you. Because you’re right, she would have insisted on coming. As I would have. Even if you ordered us to stay behind, we would have trailed you, because we love you.” She sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. She’s dead. And there’s nothing any of us can do to bring her back. All we can do at this point is try to go home. And once we get off this world, do our best to stop the Subversions. We’ll fight for her memory.”
“We’ll never forget her,” Rade agreed.
She leaned her helmet on his shoulder once more, and they stayed there, cuddled against each other in their jumpsuits, for some time.
Rade eventually stood. Jiang let him go, saying nothing. She simply stared at the distant horizon.
Rade went to Bender next. He knew this was going to be the hardest talk he ever had with his friend.
He sat down beside him. “Bender.”
He waited, and finally Bender turned his head toward him. His eyes were glazed over, and he gave him a blank look.
“How are you holding up?” Rade pressed.
Bender didn’t answer, seeming to stare right through him. Finally:
“I want to kill bugs,” Bender said. “Bugs. I’m going to kill them all.” His voice was monotone. Without emotion of any kind.
“I’m so sorry,” Rade said. “I wish we could have done more. I—” He shook his head, at a loss for words.
“I want to kill bugs,” Bender repeated in that same drone. “I’m going to kill them all.”
Rade shook his friend. “Bender. Snap out of it!”
Bender slumped slightly, and his eyes focused on Rade for the first time from behind the faceplate. “Chief.”
“Finally,” Rade said. “I’m worried about you, man.”
“I meant what I said,” Bender told him. “I’m going to kill bugs. As many as I can. And I’m going to laugh as I do it. For the rest of my days. I swear I will.”
Rade studied him uncertainly. “We’ll certainly be killing a few when we get back.”
“That’s a good start,” Bender said. “But it’s not enough. I won’t be happy until we’re traveling the galaxy, and laying waste to bugs wherever we go. You ever heard of a Dyson sphere? I want to construct one out of the bodies of dead bugs.”
“Not sure that’s possible,” Rade said. “But I’m sure you’ll try.”
Tears suddenly flowed unbidden from Bender’s eyes, and he looked away, hiding his face. Rade looked away, not wanting to embarrass his friend, not knowing what to say or do.
Finally, when he got control of himself, he glanced up once more and said, without looking at Rade: “You know what she told me just last night? She told me she couldn’t wait to introduce me to her parents. That she couldn’t wait to have little versions of herself running around our house. I mocked her, asking her how she knew I was going to stick around after we got back. I told her she was lucky to have me, and that she’d have to work hard to keep me around, because of my exacting standards. But damn it, she was the one I took for granted. She was. I shouldn’t have teased her like that. I should have told her how important she was to me. But I kept my mouth shut, too proud, t
oo self-important, to say a word.”
“It’s going to be all right,” Rade said.
“No it’s not!” Bender said. “It’s never going to be all right again.” He turned his head away, and from the way his shoulders bobbed, Rade knew he was weeping once more.
Rade laid a reassuring glove on his shoulder assembly. “I need you, Brother. The platoon needs you. Don’t give up.”
He let go, and let his friend cry in silence. Finally, Bender raised his head, and removed his helmet.
“Getting fogged up in there,” he commented, setting it down beside him. Then he wiped his wet cheeks and nose.
“We have a mission ahead,” Rade told him. “Bugs to kill.”
“Fuck yeah,” Bender said.
Rade nodded. “Someone’s going to have to integrate the armaments the alien gives us. Someone with an expertise in all things cyber and mechanical. One of the top hackers in the military. Do you know anyone like that?”
Bender momentarily broke through the fog of despair to beam proudly. “That would be me.”
“That would be you,” Rade agreed. “Come on them, let’s go check on Waldo’s progress. And let’s get these weapons hooked up. It’s time to go home and kick some bug ass.”
The trickiest part about installing the weapons Waldo gave them was hooking the devices up to the power cores of the Falcons. Bender worked with the AIs, and the alien, to achieve this.
Rade stared at the long, cylindrical device Bender had mounted in place of the stingray on Valjean’s right arm. Though Rade had a spare slot on his swivel mount to carry the weapon, because of the weight of the device, and the power drain, installing it at the same time as the stingray was impractical: it would have thrown off the balance of the Falcon and drained too much power.
“I call this is a Grid weapon,” Waldo said, through Valjean.
“What does this thing do, exactly?” Rade asked.
“It won’t harm ordinary objects in your world,” Waldo explained. “Instead, it is designed to cause damage to the Interstitial Grids existing in the higher dimensions the Subversions are connected to. The Subversions use these Interstitials to recycle energy attacks thrown against them. A blast from this weapon will almost completely destroy the Interstitial net connected to a given Subversion, making it vulnerable to attack from ordinary weapons.”
“So, we follow up with a few lightning blasts from our 5-ways, and we’re good?” Bender asked.
“You will need to follow-up with your regular weapons, yes,” Waldo replied. “As the physical form of the impacted Subversion will remain untouched.”
“What’s the firing rate and cool down period?” Pyro said.
“You can fire approximately one every second,” Waldo answered. “However, it will overheat after two to three minutes of continuous use, and will require a cool down period of at least five minutes.”
“And these won’t harm ordinary objects, you say?” Bender pressed. “Such as our own friendlies?”
“It will not,” Waldo agreed.
“Interesting.” Bender turned Alfred toward Pyro’s mech and released a shot from the Grid. A whitish bolt erupted and struck Pyro’s mech. A translucent aura momentarily surrounded the Falcon, and was absorbed into the hull armor an instant later.
Bender giggled, evidently momentarily forgetting Chow’s loss. His good spirits wouldn’t last, Rade knew, but it was good to see at least a small respite from the despair that had overtaken him.
“Hey!” Pyro returned fire with his own Grid weapon, striking Alfred.
Bender and Pyro exchanged several more such shots.
“Guys, please,” Rade said.
“Guys?” Jiang said. “You mean children.”
Bender and Pyro finally stopped. Well, sort of. They stood still, with their weapons pointed at the floor for a few moments, but then Pyro abruptly lifted his and got in another shot.
“Pyro!” Rade said.
“Sorry,” Pyro sent.
After a few more seconds, Bender, who apparently had to get in the last shot, fired a return salvo at Pyro.
“Bender!” Rade said.
“Sorry Chief,” Bender said. The mischief on the face of Bender’s avatar quickly faded, replaced by the pain of loss. Rade hadn’t thought haunted eyes could be depicted so realistically on avatars. Well, he was wrong.
Rade returned his attention to the alien.
“Be warned,” Waldo said. “The Subversions will still have thick armor, even after you disable their Interstitial Grids, so you will only be able to destroy them with energy weapons. Trying to pound them with your bare fists will be futile.”
Waldo gave them spare Grid weapons they could install on other mechs when they got back; the team secured them to their thigh regions via spare carbon fiber cords from their storage compartments. They distributed the weight evenly so as not to affect the balance of their mechs, and secured the disconnected stingrays alongside: the first priority was to unload the devices as soon as possible when they got back, preferably into the hands of Alpha platoon. Rade was certain his companions would be in the region, along with the United Systems, helping out the Sino Koreans against the alien threat. They were an elite special forces team after all: they certainly wouldn’t be sitting this one out. His only worry was that some of the men might have been lost in the fighting. He prayed that wasn’t the case.
Waldo also gave them special generators that, when attached to their hulls, surrounded the Falcons with inter-dimensional vibrations that would protect the exteriors against physical attacks from the aliens. Since most of the forces behind those attacks were sourced from the Interstitial space the aliens linked to, and the generator disrupted that space, it was effective only against Subversion strikes. It wouldn’t protect against conventional weapon attacks, so the team had to be careful not to accidentally charge any of the aliens with their own energy strikes.
Once again, Bender worked with the AIs to get the generator installed in the chest regions of the mechs, and they secured the spares to the storage compartments.
“Even with these added armaments, it will be difficult to prevail,” Waldo warned. “The odds are against you.”
“We have to try,” Rade said.
Waldo nodded. “I have dictated the alien starship blueprints to your mech. Your AI will guide you to the enemy core.”
“Valjean, show me,” Rade asked.
A saucer-shaped blueprint overlaid Rade’s vision. Everything was mapped out.
“How did you get this data?” Rade asked.
“It was tricky,” Valjean replied. “The tube glimmers weren’t capable of a high-enough resolution to portray the different levels with images, so we worked out a scheme whereby Waldo would dictate the Cartesian coordinates for the vectors composing the blueprints, and I would input them in succession.”
“Sounds tedious,” Rade said.
“Only for organics,” Valjean said.
“Where’s the core Waldo mentioned?” Rade pressed.
“It can be found here,” Valjean replied.
A waypoint highlighted on the blueprints. It was slightly offset from the center of the ship, where the external hull pressed inward.
Rade forwarded the blueprints to the other members of the team, and then turned toward Waldo. “There is one thing I’m wondering… you’ve been able to create food and atmosphere for us. And now these weapons. You produced them on the fly, I assume. That tells me you could probably create robots or other automatons equipped with these weapons to stop the Subversions.”
“I could, yes,” the alien said. “However, I’d have to print these robots from the standard blueprints I have available. This means the starship’s AI would be able to override their directives, taking control. I’ve consulted with my local AI, and it tells me it will take at least a few days to come up with an appropriate lock out mechanism, which will require a redesign of the command and control interface. Also, I admit… well, sending in robots to attack the
Subversions feels too much like turning against my own race. Already, a part of me feels guilty over supplying you with weapons to be used against my own kind, even if its members are attempting genocide of your race.”
“I think I understand,” Rade said.
“Good,” Waldo signed. “Now stand here in front of the portal region before I change my mind.” Waldo indicated a space on the far side of the room, between the glass tubes.
“A moment,” Jiang said. “If we had waited a few days, you could have sent robots to retrieve the element from the Teppakhan?”
“Yes,” the alien said.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jiang said. “We lost someone to that creature, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I thought speed was of utmost importance to you,” Waldo said. “And that you would prefer to perform such an operation yourselves, if only for a break from the monotony, and an opportunity to get in some hard practice for the coming mission ahead. My apologies if my assumptions were incorrect.”
Jiang didn’t answer.
“Well then, let’s go before Waldo has a change of heart…” Rade said.
He and the others took their places before the portal region, and waited for Waldo to create the Slipstream that would take them to the Sino Korean colony that was under attack.
“If you came with us, could you stop the AI?” Rade said. “And find a peaceful solution to this?”
“No,” the alien said. “The AI is malfunctioning. It won’t let me near. You will have to destroy it. I don’t want to be there when that happens. Understand, the AI and myself… we were once friends.”
Rade nodded. “I can appreciate that. Thank you for all your help. I won’t forget it. Someday I’d like to return here, to witness the progress you’ve made restoring your people to their former glory.”
“We shall see,” Waldo said. “Good luck to you and your platoon, Rade Galaal. If you fail, I’ve made up my mind: I will not be sending any further help.”
A rip in spacetime appeared before the team, big enough to fit a lone mech. He and the others would have to pass through in single file.
