by David Beers
The suit quickly diagnosed the air coming in, and the HUD displayed Atmosphere 99.97% similar to Earth. No danger.
“Air is safe,” he called back.
The bay door finished opening, and Ares found himself staring into a lightless room. They appeared to be inside the structure rather than docked to the outside. His HUD told him the temperature of the platform they rested on was nearly identical to the temperature inside the ship. “Temp is fine,” he said as Veena approached him. “Something in here is generating heat, and they have the means to keep it from escaping.”
Veena was quiet as she stood slightly behind him and to the left. Ares went forward but saw nothing and no one on the platform. He stepped off the bay ramp onto a solid surface. The area was as dark as the cargo bay had been, if not darker. “Can you see anything?”
“My eyes are adjusting some, but no, not really. My right hand is on your left elbow, so don’t go too quickly, or you’ll leave me behind.”
“Got it,” Ares responded. For all their bitching and the early distrust and the arguments, at that moment, they only had each other. Perhaps that had been true since they had both abandoned their posts with the Commonwealth, but neither had felt it as clearly as when they stepped onto an alien structure, alone except for each other.
Ares’ duty, which had been to the Commonwealth, was now to the woman at his side.
There was no welcoming party, no group of soldiers to kill them. There was nothing but this black room and a hall leading off to the left. “We’re going forward,” he said. “There’s a hallway to the left, and unless you have a better idea, I vote we follow it.”
“There’s no moving that ship without doing something here first, so yeah, that’s got my vote too. Let’s go.”
Ares gave a nod that no one could see and then started forward. They walked slowly, Ares’ HUD telling him when Veena’s hand lost touch with his suit. It also mapped out where the hallway was taking them, keeping up with the turns and elevations. They appeared to be winding around the edge of the structure, but there were no other hallways connected to this one. Ares couldn’t go left or right because there was no left or right, just this hallway leading them to what appeared to be nowhere.
“How long have we been in here?” he asked the HUD.
Two standard hours, it displayed.
Ares stopped walking.
“What is it?” Veena said.
“We’ve been winding around the tunnel for two hours so far. Cast forward,” he told the HUD.
Blue light shot onto the floor in front of his feet, allowing Veena to see the trail they’d taken. She shielded her eyes for a second while they adjusted to the new light.
After a few moments, she knelt and slowly traced her hand over the blue trail. “You see what it is?”
“No.”
She traced the trail again, this time from their current spot back to the ship. This time, Ares saw it. “That’s the first digit from the paper.”
“Exactly.” She stood up and kept staring at the blue line. “Wherever this hallway leads, it’s going to resemble the second digit, then the third, and so on. The question is, why?”
Ares didn’t have an answer.
“Also, and maybe even more importantly, have you had the ability to cast a light like that the entire time?”
Ares raised both eyebrows, feeling embarrassed and moronic. He hadn’t even thought about it. “Yeah, I suppose I have.”
Veena looked like she wanted to slap him. “Perhaps it’s a good idea to start using it. Might make this a bit quicker, yes?”
Ares ignored the comment and switched from the tiny blue light on the floor to a wider floodlight that revealed the hallway to them.
“WHY ARE YOU HERE?”
The words boomed from the walls, floor, and ceiling. They came from everywhere at once, loud in a way human voices couldn’t be.
Ares turned to Veena. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open. Both hands were on her beam, pointing it at the floor. She nodded slightly, and Ares followed her gaze.
A droid stood a few meters away, with no evidence of where it had come from. It remained as still as a cadaver, nothing on it moving, nothing showing any sign of life.
“WHY ARE YOU HERE?” Again the voice roared from the structure, causing the MechSuit to turn down the volume in Ares’ helmet.
Ares’ unholstered his Whip, letting the three lasers unfurl almost to the floor. The deep-red crimson that had been so feared on Earth was unknown in this strange part of the galaxy. The droid at the end of the hall probably knew as much about his callsign and his weapon as it did his father’s lessons when Ares was a boy. Nothing. To the droid and whoever else controlled his ship, he was an unwanted intruder. More, those in control here apparently felt that anything within range of their tractor beam was an intruder, whether or not it entered this strange floating structure.
“We’re here because you forced us to be. Kindly let us get back on our ship, and we’ll be here no more,” he answered. For all he knew, the makers of this place might think him a droid too, given his armor and the voice emanating from his helmet.
“YOU’RE NOT WORTHY,” the voice roared from the walls.
The droid came to life. A strip about an inch wide and five inches long that ran across its head turned a bright neon-blue. The droid's arms ended without hands or other appendages, but now neon-blue lasers shot out of both of them. Holes opened across its thin, metal body, and shorter blue lasers created a defensive shield around its torso and legs. Ares understood that if he got too close, those things would burn through his suit.
He turned his head to the left. “Veena, don’t shoot, no matter what. The area is too close, and I don’t know if these walls are reflective. You could send a laser bouncing twenty times in here. I’ll handle this.”
“Handle it fast then, Titan.”
Ares looked up.
The droid was rushing toward him, its neon-blue laser arms pumping hard. The sounds of its metal feet colliding with the floor echoed off the walls.
Ares didn’t hesitate. He lashed his Whip forward, all three lasers slicing through the air and meeting no resistance as he cut through the droid.
It collapsed to the floor with three large incisions cut through its head and both shoulders. Smoke rose into the air around both of them.
“What in the gods’ names was that about?” he whispered. That had been too easy. It had been beyond easy. A half-trained boy could have killed that thing.
He caught his breath at what came next. He’d never seen anything like it. The holes he’d cut into the droid began closing. The metal that had split turned liquid to repair the gashes, then hardened again. This continued until the metal husk looked as if it had never been harmed.
“Get back, Veena,” Ares said.
The walls asked their question once more. “WHY ARE YOU HERE?”
The droid rose off the floor as if the artificial gravity had no effect on it. It didn’t use its arms or legs to stand, just lifted until it was upright again, the blue strip on its head alive and lasers shooting out the ends of its arms.
It came at Ares. He lashed with his Whip in the same fashion, this time wanting to understand rather than harm the droid.
Its two arms blocked the Whip, crossing its lasers over one another. At the same time, it kicked out. Ares’ Whip was wrapped around the lasers, so he turned his body sideways, dodging the kick. He used a simple twist to move to the opposite side of the droid’s body, unfurled his Whip at the same time, and brought it down on the creature’s unprotected skull.
It dropped to the floor as it had before.
Ares looked over the momentarily deactivated droid and found Veena. “It’s learning. It’s going to keep adapting to me and the way I fight.”
“Can you kill it?”
The metal was liquifying and repairing itself as they spoke.
“Not yet,” Ares said. His Whip formed a straight spear, and he shoved it through
the thing’s chest. The liquifying metal stopped flowing. He left the spear continuing to burn inside the droid. “Well, that’s working, but I’m not going to leave my Whip here.”
Veena’s beam was pointed at the droid, though her finger was off the trigger. “You might have to.”
“WHY ARE YOU HERE?”
“I’m seriously tired of that question,” Ares said as he heard a new sound.
“Liquid metal” were the two words that came to his mind. He turned toward where the sound came from and froze.
The walls rippled, a wave running across them from the far end to where he stood. He watched as they fell into one another, though that wasn’t the correct way to describe what happened. It was all his mind could come up with, though. The result was a circular area instead of the hall he’d been standing in, and three other droids now stood where walls had been moments before.
“The droids are part of the ship,” Veena said. “It’s part of them.”
Ares didn’t give a damn about what they were part of. He understood what they were capable of, and that was all that mattered. He assessed the situation as quickly and coldly as he could. Worst-case scenario, these droids and this structure were a hive mind. What one droid learned, the others would as well. They would continue adapting to him until he could no longer fight back. Then they would kill him.
Ares amplified his hearing, needing to know when something in the structure was changing. The sound of liquid metal flowing would tell him.
Lasers shot from the other three droids’ arms, each droid using a different color—yellow, green, and purple. Ares reached behind him and pulled his Whip out of the droid’s body, knowing that doing so would allow it to heal.
“You want me to shoot them? I should have enough room,” Veena said from a couple of meters back.
“Not until there’s no other choice. I have some room yet. They don’t know much about what I’m capable of, so maybe I can find a way to kill them.”
“Do it, then.”
He didn’t know how quickly these things learned or if they could extrapolate what they did know to future acts. He was about to find out.
Ares took two running steps and leaped, then thrust the Whip at Purple, sending the laser through the top of the droid’s metal skull. It had tried to block him from the first attack he’d done, the simple lash, but his Whip had come from somewhere else.
So they learn slowly, he thought. Good.
He moved across the circular area like an evil dancer, graceful but carrying death everywhere he went. His Whip carved and cut, slicing down droids as they came for him. He went through all three of the new ones just as Blue was rising.
It mimicked his leaping strike. He stepped to the side and cut the thing in half.
That would have to kill it.
The others were already rising. Ares turned, his Whip at his side. The three came at him, each doing a perfect copy of one of the moves he’d already used. He understood the forms as well as any man to ever live and knew how to counter each. He made quick work of the three, then brought his attention back to the one he’d cut in half.
The godsdamn thing was pulling itself toward the other half. The liquid metal was stretching out, grabbing the floor, and tugging like a million tiny arms. Wires and metal frayed as the outer shell continued its work of reattaching itself.
“Try the head!” Veena shouted. Her beam was raised, though her finger still wasn’t on the trigger.
Ares stepped over the lower half to the upper and brought his Whip across the thing’s neck. He kicked the head, his metal boot clanging into the skull, and it flew across the newly-created room.
The other three were back up, and Ares now understood the truth. It wasn’t just the learning that would kill him. These things did not tire. They could die a thousand deaths and come back fresh each time. He, on the other hand? How long could he continue this? Even though he was in peak physical condition, he would eventually falter.
“Stand over that head and shoot at it every time it tries to heal!” he shouted at Veena.
Then he went to work. It was monotonous, the continual cutting and rising. Three, four, five times, he killed the droids. Each time they rose from the dead. Blue remained unable to heal as long as Veena kept firing at its skull, but even that wouldn’t work forever.
The minutes passed, and he came up with no other ideas. The only addition was kicking another skull over to Veena, who continued firing. She switched her beam with her pulse, but soon they realized even that wouldn’t work.
Ares trotted backward as the two he’d freshly killed lay on the other side of the room. He glanced at the metal skulls.
“They’re healing faster,” Veena told him. She fired the pulse at the one on the left.
“Yeah, mine are too.” Ares was winded, and it seemed the faster he killed them, the faster they shot back up. The two were already on their feet and coming at him.
He moved slowly away from Veena, waiting for them to make a move. They had started coordinating their attacks, using his forms against him in ways that complimented each other. They weren’t advanced yet, but it wouldn’t be long.
He blocked the attack on the right with his Whip and saw his first mistake. He ducked, ready to kick with his suit, but the droid wasn’t where it should have been.
It was behind him.
He slammed his left hand on the ground, thrust himself up, and twirled horizontally in the air.
The droid’s laser sliced, cutting deep into his suit.
Ares landed two meters away, the HUD displaying the damage. It hadn’t hit his body, but his reaction time had kept it at bay by only centimeters.
On one knee, he looked at Veena. Her eyes were wide. Smoke trailed up to the ceiling from where his suit had burned.
For the first time since this ludicrous battle started, he was down while the two droids remained standing.
Ares closed his eyes for a moment and saw his father’s face. There were no words, no lessons, just the hard look of a man who had loved him and raised him as well as he could.
Ares had brought them here. He had been the one who wanted this algorithm. He realized he would die here, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. These machines would continue coming, wearing him down battle by battle, until he lay on his back and their lasers devoured him.
He opened his eyes. The two robots stood in front of him, their arm lasers pointing toward the floor. “Veena, I’m going to hold them off as long as I can. I’ve got time yet, but not forever. I want you to run. Try to board the ship and get it to take off. Do whatever you can. I’m not going to live past this, and if you stay, you won’t either.”
Ares’ Whip had shortened. He held it in his right hand, still on a knee. Veena’s MechPulse pointed at the skulls on the ground, and even from where he knelt, he saw how quickly they were repairing themselves. Their time here was nearly at an end. “There’s nothing else you can do,” he told her. “Save yourself. I’m sorry I brought us here.”
Veena gave a single nod, and in it, Ares saw self-hate, anger, and the realization that this structure would end them both. Even if she tried to escape, her chance of success was small.
He nodded back and Veena was gone, disappearing down the hall that had brought them here.
Ares rose to his feet. The faceplate on his helmet pulled back, showing the blood beneath his eyes. It was smeared from sweat and made it look like he’d been weeping blood.
“See it and die.”
Veena ran for five minutes before she stopped. She knew they had walked for two hours to get here, but what did that mean? In a structure like this, where droids were made from the walls, she could run forever.
She stood in the middle of the hallway and turned, facing where she’d come from. Where Ares still was.
“What’s it matter?” she whispered to herself. “If I live, if I leave him behind? What’s it matter where these halls lead, even if it’s to the greatest ship I’ve eve
r seen? If I leave him back there, every hallway will only lead to one place as long as I breathe. Back here.”
Veena had risen to Primus, and given the chance, she’d left another Primus to fight a battle for her. It was the coward’s way out, and even five minutes of living as a coward were far too much for her.
She strapped the MechPulse to her back, and with the StarBeam holstered, ran as fast as she could back to the man she’d left.
Ares didn’t know how long he fought. Time no longer mattered, only the ability to remain standing. To remain cutting. To remain fighting.
He thought back to the fight against the much-less-talented boy. The one who’d kept coming, who’d inflicted wounds methodically and never used flash to win. Ares had no idea what had happened to that kid or if he was still alive, a good husband to someone. Maybe he was raising kids, an all-around Commonwealth gold-star citizen.
What happened to him didn’t matter either, but the fundamentals he’d used that day did.
Ares went back to the fundamentals. Everything he used was learned, adapted, and put into an ever-increasing knowledge bank of skills—all of which would be used to kill him.
Still, he fought. There were flashes of brilliance, of speed, of strength, but his body was wearing down. He killed the droids, and they were reborn. His MechSuit collected scars as their laser arms got past his slowing defenses.
Eventually, he found his back against the wall. The four stood in front of him. His heart was beating rapidly, breath heaving in and out of his lungs. The droids showed no fatigue. No scars. No sign that they had been beaten even once.
This is it, he thought.
“Father,” he whispered, “I have not forgotten you or what you taught me. I hope my life and my death have made you proud.”
