by C. Gockel
Meeting Davies’s eyes, 6T9 split his fingers into a V, touched his own chest, pointed at Davies’s chest, at a place a few meters into the lobby, and then pointed above with a quick jabbing motion. They’d leave the shelter of the overhang and fire on the Infected above.
Davies nodded.
Crouching low, 6T9 backed faster than a human could into the lobby and fired at where his Q-comm told him their enemies were. He saw shadows fall, and then phasers spinning toward him. Davies, human-slow but quieter, was beside him an instant later. They could have been part of the same machine.
6T9 danced sideways to avoid the incoming fire. Sparks erupted from his rifle and his shoulder, momentarily blinding him. Sensors in his right arm screamed. And then he was staring up at the sights of a pistol—that vanished as the shadow suspending it sank under the onslaught from Davies.
Dropping his useless rifle, 6T9 reached around his body for his pistol. Beyond the window the red cross emblem rose into the air as the hover took off. Pushing Davies beneath the overhang with his semi-functional right hand, 6T9 covered their retreat by shooting left-handed.
Moments later, he and Davies were crouching against the foyer wall. The ship was gone. On the balcony across the lobby, the glow of phaser recoil dampness came into view. Davies and 6T9 shot nearly in unison, Davies covering the ones on the left, 6T9 those on the right. Once, twice … four times, and then the bank was silent except for Davies, panting beside him. Nothing moved above them.
6T9 took a deep breath.
The General’s laughter echoed above. “You think you have won against us. You have not. You will not.”
From outside came a whistling, growing louder by the millisecond.
Pushing Davies beneath the archway, 6T9 screamed over the ether and his Q-comm, “Take cover!”
The Infected laughed.
The world exploded.
40
Fallout
Galactic Republic: System 5 New Grande
6T9 came back online. He hadn’t closed his eyes when he’d shut down and they began to tear, and his vision blurred. Not that there was much to see; the sky was nearly pitch black with only a little orange at the edges. Reviewing the seconds before his emergency shut down, he saw New Grande briefly lit bright as noon. He checked his internal chronometer. He’d been out twenty-seven minutes and thirty-two seconds. His suit had been punctured on his right side, just at the shoulder joint. It had shorted, and that had caused the shutdown. His left shoulder was pinned down. Both of his arms were out of their sockets. He was fairly certain he could fix them. The floor beneath both shoulders had partially given way; his back was higher than his upper limbs. Whatever had fallen on top of him had stretched his arms in ways arms weren’t meant to bend, both shoulders forced too far back. It could have been much worse. The front of his suit had a crack from his chest to his navel—if his suit hadn’t absorbed the impact that caused that, he probably wouldn’t be capable of putting himself back together.
There was a yellow warning light in the periphery of his vision. Radiation levels were too high for long-term exposure, even beneath the rubble: conventional fission weapons had been used, primitive, effective, and the wounds it would inflict on those who’d survived would be horrendous. 6T9 was less susceptible to radiation than a human, but not immune. However, his Fleet envirosuit—designed for space walks and fission weapons and reactor accidents—and the polycrete rubble had kept his exposure minimal, even with the crack and the puncture. If Davies’s suit had been breached … His circuits went dim. “Davies? Davies?”
6T9 held still, listening, resisting his self-preservation function’s impulse to push off the rubble. There was a continuous muffled roar, but no answer or even a cough. 6T9 tried to reach into the ether—if he could call for help—but got a local error. Something in his suit short circuiting or the impact had made him etherless.
Gritting his teeth, 6T9 contracted his deltoids and pectoral muscles. His humerus bones in both arms snapped into place with teeth rattling force.
“Mew.”
“Mao?” 6T9 asked, struggling to lift whatever had him pinned. His right arm wasn’t completely functional—his fingers weren’t responding at all, and his movements on that side were clumsy. He managed to bend his fingers into a fist using what turned out to be the metal door and pushed. Nothing happened at first, but then something gave, and it lifted a few centimeters. It was enough to get his legs involved. He slid his heels up, pushed with his arms, and lifted the door another few centis. He pulled his heels a little higher and was able to get more of his body involved. His power levels were dropping fast, but he kept at it, the muffled roar getting louder as the door lifted, and the warning light for radiation levels went yellow to orange. At last, he thrust the door up and away. Glass shattered; the radiation detection light turned to red. He blinked. An enormous glass wall from across the street had fallen on top of the door, along with dust and bricks and chunks of polycrete. His hand went to the crack in his suit, and he exhaled a ragged breath—Eliza’s ashes and his access key were still safely inside. Pushing himself up to a sitting position, he gaped at a world transformed. The midrises were gone; they’d been blown by the blast partially onto the bank. The city was gone, where it had existed were just fires and ash, whipped by an unnatural wind that would have lifted Volka dangerously if she were here. It was too hot for prolonged human exposure. It was impossible to say with his ethernet fried and the smoke so thick if a rescue had begun. He could still connect via Q-comm, but he had to find Davies. He surveyed the rubble at his feet, but it bore no clues.
“Davies?” he called again. “Sergeant!” he shouted.
“Mew.”
The kitten’s cry was small and pitiful and 3.75 meters from where 6T9 stood, further from the boulevard—or where the boulevard had been and now was only rubble—and a little to 6T9’s side. At first, he saw nothing but bricks heaped atop a large slab of cement, but then he saw a flutter of shadow. It could have been ash, but 6T9 turned on the lights in his eyes, and saw that it was a kitten emerging from cracked slabs of polycrete. 6T9 exhaled. The concrete had protected it from the worst of the radiation and heat, but it could not live much longer.
Crawling perpendicular to where his Q-comm estimated Davies’s body was, 6T9 made his way to the kitten. She pawed ineffectually at a spot in the rubble, and then wavered and sagged at his approach. Sinking onto one of the stones, she drew her tail around her body.
It was now forty-seven minutes since the blast. Radiation levels were falling—so were his power levels. Typically, radiation levels one hour after a nuclear strike were about 30 Gy. Deadly for a human. Dangerous for 6T9 after prolonged exposure. But he was going to lose power soon and then he’d be useless. 6T9’s Q-comm was protected from said radiation by a thick metal skull. He made an executive decision. Taking off his helmet, 6T9 set it over the kitten. The heat of the fires around him began to recharge him immediately. Mao blinked her eyes at 6T9 but didn’t mew in acknowledgement. 6T9 began heaving away bricks and cement. His right hand was next to worthless but pinching the blocks between his left and his right, he was able to make progress. He only stopped once to withdraw to his Q-comm. He put himself into the conference room where he’d warned that the Dark would strike again. It was filled to overflowing. There were the sex ‘bots he’d given Q-comms to, Vice Admiral Wong, members of Fleet he hadn’t seen before, and far across the room, Noa.
6T9 gave himself a physical form, an avatar with his Fleet armor. He didn’t bother to show that his suit was cracked or that his arm was semi-functional. Noa was talking to Gate 5’s avatar, but she saw him almost immediately. “Sixty!” she called, pushing through the crowd. Gate 5 followed her, his arms of liquid mercury behind his back.
“You’re in one piece?” Noa asked, putting her hands on his avatar’s shoulders.
6T9 grimaced. “More or less.”
She hugged him, fast as thought. In a mindscape—ether or Q-comm—cyborgs and and
roids were physical equals. “We feared the worst when Lieutenant Michael Snow, the two Luddecceans, and members of your army showed up on Gate 5 without you.”
Her body was flush against his, and her embrace was strong. There was a part of him that didn’t want to move, but then he did.
Gently extricating himself, 6T9 met her eyes. “I am glad to hear they are alive. Davies is with me, I’ll need med evac.”
“He’s alive?” Five asked.
6T9 stared at him a beat too long.
Noa drew back. “We can’t, Sixty. Even if he was alive. Three of the twelve nukes they aimed at the city hit New Grande. We’re evacuating from outside the blast zone and working our way in.”
“Triage,” 6T9 said. There would be hundreds of thousands—millions—alive, but suffering and close to death at the edges of the blasts. Where 6T9 was, the survivors would be fewer.
Noa’s lips flattened into a grim line.
6T9 wouldn’t die from radiation sickness, or lack of water, and with his suit, he’d survive even walking through fire. If not for Davies, he would have lost his body twice over to phaser fire in just the past twenty-four hours.
“I’ll carry him to you,” 6T9 promised them and anyone who was listening. He heard Lishi and Jack calling his name, but he withdrew from the mindscape.
Consciousness returning to the real hellscape, he began digging again. He had to be careful not to make the situation worse. There was a steel beam, from the midrise—or the bank—that had just missed 6T9. It was pinning Davies down. 6T9 was afraid if he lifted it, he could wind up dislodging more debris on top of the man. The suits could withstand a lot of pressure, but they had their limits—and Davies’s suit was probably pushing them already. 6T9 consoled himself with the thought that Davies wasn’t out of oxygen or water, and safe from radiation. The kitten Mao inhabited, on the other hand … The creature had drawn its legs up under its body. It wavered, eyes half closed, as it watched 6T9 dig.
Seventy-two minutes and thirty-five seconds after 6T9 had started, he heard a cough. He’d removed most of the large hunks of bricks and mortar and began frantically digging through the dust, chips of glass, and pebble-sized bits of building material that had slipped through. The Illustrious Mao might have still been in the kitten’s body because she slipped through the visor of his helmet and began digging beside him. Davies’s visor came into view, almost unrecognizable beneath a coating of dust and ash. 6T9 took off his gloves and brushed it away with his hands.
Davies’s eyes blinked up at him, and 6T9 almost bent forward and kissed his helmet. Instead he said, “I’ll get you out of here.” The man was still buried from the chest down, but his suit looked undamaged. 6T9 began moving down his body, where there were still larger pieces of debris. He heaved the larger pieces as far away as possible, so that they wouldn’t dislodge more weight onto the sergeant.
Davies’s voice cracked. “Falade and Lang?”
Not pausing, 6T9 assured him, “They’re safe. They got away on the medical transport.”
Davies sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought them down with me on my death wish.”
Tossing a hunk of polycrete, 6T9 all but shouted, “Your death wish will not be granted.” He was panting, not because he needed air, but because of a snippet of code that made him appear more human. It was wasting power. 6T9 found it and shut it down.
“I can’t feel anything below my neck.” Davies said matter-of-factly. “Mao says that I’ve fractured a cervical vertebrae.”
6T9 paused. “You can’t hear Mao. You don’t have ethernet, and you’re not telepathic.” He didn’t know why he was arguing.
Davies’s eyes went to the kitten. “She says that she has to leave her body. She says it will want to stay with me.”
The kitten settled down on Davies’s chest, tucking her little tail around herself, and paws underneath.
6T9 raised his hand to lift her away, not wanting to strain the human’s suit—though he knew that was illogical, that the kitten’s mass was insignificant.
“Please let her stay,” Davies said, gaze on Mao. The cat’s eyes were tightly closed.
6T9 sagged back.
“Miriam always wanted a kitten,” Davies added.
6T9’s Q-comm lit, trying to decipher who Miriam was. His wife?
Davies’s eyes left the kitten and went to a point behind 6T9’s shoulder. “You always liked cats too, Mama.” 6T9 stared at Davies, alarmed. Head trauma? It did not matter; they’d go to the Republic, their doctors could fix him … except Davies didn’t have a neural interface or neural net implanted in his brain that had a record of his mind pre-trauma. Davies couldn’t be over twenty-four, though. His brain was still plastic. “You’ll recover,” 6T9 assured him. And then he realized that Davies hadn’t blinked in seventy-three seconds. His eyes were still in the distance, beyond 6T9’s shoulder.
Mao’s body abruptly went rigid and slipped from Davies’s chest. 6T9 gently picked her up. Mao’s pulse was gone.
“Davies?” 6T9 whispered.
There was no response. 6T9’s mind raced with all the ways a cervical fracture could lead to death—stroke was very likely. Fleet’s ships were far away, and Davies was still covered by debris. There would be no rescue. Mao was still in 6T9’s hands, her former body rapidly stiffening. Remembering Davies’s words, 6T9 settled the little creature’s body so that it wouldn’t fall off of Davies’s chest. He’d managed to uncover most of the sergeant’s left arm. Pulling it completely free, 6T9 wrapped it around the kitten, and then fell back in the dust and just sat.
There might have been shouts mixed with the fire’s roar and the wind’s moans, but he didn’t move.
41
The Admiral Gives Her Orders
Uncharted Space
“The drones are away,” Volka’s new lieutenant said, entering Sundancer’s compartment, FET12 on his heels, the rest of the crew moving out to the bridge. Dixon was friendly. He also didn’t quite know what to make of her. Was she a figurehead? A Joan d’Arc for an alien spaceship species? But he smiled agreeably. “We’re ready to go back for more.”
Volka almost nodded in acknowledgement … and then she had a sensation of chill, as though an icy breeze had blown through her. The walls dimmed slightly, and Sundancer’s anxiety and confusion made her heart flutter.
“Carl?” Volka turned to the werfle, curled on a crate. His eyes were closed, and he was violently shivering all over, as though he’d felt the same frigid blast.
FET12 gasped and rushed to the werfle. He picked him up, but Carl continued to tremble and didn’t wake.
“Looks like the little guy is having a nightmare,” Lieutenant Dixon said.
Volka’s chest constricted. “Something has happened.”
“What?” the lieutenant blurted. “Where?”
“We’ll know soon,” Volka said. She tasted metal on her tongue. Her gaze flashed over FET12. She almost asked him to connect to Gate 1 via Q-comm, but then thought better of it. “FET12, I need to contact the others now. Be ready for me.”
Lieutenant Dixon went pale, and his thoughts rolled through her mind. Was this going to be one of those telepathic conference calls in the reports?
Volka hadn’t thought of bringing him with her, but then the lieutenant shifted on his feet, thinking about how some in Intel thought that the telepathic conference calls were a sort of mass hysteria.
That settled it. “Lieutenant, I hope you’re comfortable with telepathy. FET12, if anyone finds us staring into space, you know what to tell them.”
Dixon raised his hands. “Wait—”
Volka met his gaze, but thought of Sundancer, the other ships, and her crew that they’d taken from her, and she thought of Lieutenant Dixon, pulling him with her into a space between the stars. Young appeared, and Dr. Patrick, Rhinehart, Jerome, Ramirez, Stratos—for once not thinking of sex—and all the rest. Their ships were there, too. She wasn’t a figurehead here; she was part of their tribe. She’d saved them from c
ertain death at the edge of the universe and tied them all to destinies that were stranger than they had ever imagined. They were awed to be with their ships, bonded to them already, and in the human world they’d received a sudden unique elevation in status.
Still, they were worried now.
“Something terrible has happened,” said Dr. Patrick, and Ramirez added, “My ship felt it, too.” There was a chorus of, “Same.” It might not have been a word, but an acknowledgement that spread between their hearts.
Jerome said, “Tab said there was a nuclear strike on New Grande.”
Thoughts could stop—Volka hadn’t appreciated that before. For a moment, there was only a collective shock, and then there was a whirlwind of mental clamor as the crew thought of everyone they had ever known associated with New Grande. The mental cacophony didn’t sweep Volka away; her own fear was too consuming. Sixty was there—or maybe not. He might have been melted to slag already and might exist only as a surge of electricity in a distant computer. Even if his Q-comm was saved, if he put it in another body—in a Tab, or a Bracelet—he might not want Volka anymore. Ah, but maybe they were beyond that already. She swallowed down her sorrow. She had to find him, whatever form he inhabited, whatever his feelings for her were or weren’t. She would find him.
