“I’ll get there if I have to kill someone. I’ll use the robot-spider to defeat surveillance scanners. How did they find you-?”
“No questions now, please, I must conserve my power.”
“Yes, Maauro.”
I sense fear in him. Fear for me, for what his life will be if I am lost. “I intend to arrive safely. But if chance is against me … it has been an honor and a privilege to share existence with you.”
“And with you,” he managed. “Concentrate on staying alive. I’ll see you in 44 minutes.”
My hands shook as I fought a rising dread. Maauro was in trouble. How she’d survived the initial attack seemed incredible to me, yet she was still on her way. But without the pod for her to shelter in, I have to get her inside quickly. I cracked the door to my suite. Down the hallway I saw the bored minder, leaning back in an uncomfortable, cheap chair. I moved to the window, looking at the drop below. No way I could manage that, not without equipment I didn’t have.
I switched out of my uniform jacket and hat, throwing them in a carryall with my laser. I pulled out a light windbreaker that would cover my uniform shirt. Thin disguise, but it was more to avoid notice than for any other purpose.
I turned to the robot spider that Maauro sent with me. It sat on the bed in its own little valley. The weight of it hinted that it was made of very dense matter, possibly some of Maauro’s own chassis material, which she was usually loath to risk.
“Unit,” I address it. “Option A for the guard.”
The spider blinks a green light at me. Order understood. I open the door and the spider scuttles down the hallway in a series of short rushes until it reaches the guard. I see a slight wisp of gas escape from the spider. After a few moments the guard stopped leaning the chair backwards and planted it on all four legs. He settled in a bit more comfortably, then the slow-acting sleep gas put him under and his hands fell at his sides.
I ran out, scooped up the heavy robospider and hit the elevator button, though it risked running into someone, since I was nine floors up. I resisted the urge to hammer uselessly at the button even though it seems to take an eternity for the damn thing to come.
Mercifully it arrives empty. I slipped in and hit lobby, then opened the pouch at my belt for the robospider to slip into it into it. “Activate B-2 as soon as we hit the lobby floor,” I ordered.
The green light winks conspiratorially at me.
As the doors to the elevator slid open a dull boom shook the floor. The lobby was full of people, all of whom shot to their feet, alarmed by the detonation. Perfect. No one was paying any attention to me. People began to run toward the entrance as an alarm sounded.
I cut left; the hotel had several entrances and the left-most one opened directly on an escalator running into the nearby mall area. People ran past me into the building, but none addressed me or took any notice. In seconds I was out and down the escalator.
I pulled my com from its pocket. It would be too risky to call Maauro now, but the small screen displayed her path down toward Tir-a-Mar, beamed from her to the spider, to my comp. She was still on course for the central industrial area. Good. I cursed not being able to rent a robocab, but that meant using credits and would be like firing a flare saying, “Here I am!” So I jogged at my best pace, hopping slidewalks and annoying other pedestrians.
The journey began to assume that nightmare quality where you cannot seem to get to your destination no matter what you do. Life in space didn’t make for a good runner and it had been weeks since I’d legged it any distance. My chest began to hurt and my legs began to burn. I pushed on.
The com began to point upward. I was below Maauro. An elevator shot me many levels into the industrial sector, to the top of Tir-a-Mar. But the signal was starting to flicker on comp. I cursed savagely and this time couldn’t hold back from slamming the elevator button. If the doors opened on the way up I was going to shoot whoever slowed me.
Inspiration hit. I opened my pouch. “Unit,” I demanded, “block out any signal on this elevator other than mine. Make it go express.”
Green light from the little spider that could.
The doors opened and by the flickering com I went right. Maauro should be minutes above me.
The com locater signal went dead. I tore open the pouch. The robot winked a green light at me. It was still operating. Maybe that meant something about Maauro. I raced down the corridor to the only airlock in the area, according to my com.
“Okay little fellow,” I said, pulling it out and placing it on the airlock control panel, “one last job to do for our lady.”
I sail through the glowing blue sky, gradually sinking through the canyons of clouds to the layer where the floating city awaits me. I have no sense of scale. There is only the endless sky around and above, the gradually thickening layers below and my tiny parasail. I could be alone in all creation, outside of time and space. Indeed time itself seems to have lost any meaning for me.
Shock. My wandering thoughts are a sign of degradation as the temperatures and pressures of Cimer take their toll on me. I focus and concentrate on inspecting my sail. Just in time, it is showing severe signs of wear. I activate a small factory inside of me that can produce a durable plastic. I force this up into one of my finger flechette tubes and spray it on the underside, reinforcing the structure and closing small holes before then can become tears.
Alarm. The factory has failed, as my system redirects power to my Infester-made left arm, which is beginning to seize up. Additional power heats it back to mobility, but I am now in a race with entropy. I shut down all non-essential systems to scavenge power.
A dot appears below me. I focus on it with some difficulty. It is the floating city. I check my descent and correct my approach. I am coming in steeper then I would prefer, but the parasail is unreliable and I must get down as soon as I can.
“Wrik,” I send, “I am 79 seconds from set down. Status?”
“Maauro, thank God! I’m in the industrial section at the airlock. I have installed the anti-surveillance intruder program you gave me so I can fool the surveillance systems. I am hacking through an airlock. There should be environment suits inside.”
“Good, I am homing in on your signal and will land as close as I can.”
I detect cracking in the parasail and steepen my descent angle. I must get down but my chassis is beginning to freeze. If I land too hard, I may shatter.
I am over the city perimeter, heading between the pylons and towers, descending toward the industrial center and the power core. I will come down short of Wrik’s location, yet I must reach him quickly. The city has been designed to be secure in the terrible gravity and pressure. Its hull is several meters thick, consisting of molecularly linked metal-ceramics. The airlocks are reinforced both mechanically and cybernetically, so I will not be able to force one in my remaining time. I must rely on Wrik to open it.
Disaster. The parasail evaporates. I plunge down over a hundred meters in the savage gravity. I direct all damage control and remaining power to my legs. It barely suffices. I land hard, shock rattling through my systems. Slowly, I stand as damage control does its best to preserve me, but I have drained most of my resources to survive the landing. I turn toward the central core. I have retained my fix on Wrik, but due to damage I cannot raise him. I stagger forward. It is cold and dark. Ammonia snow is sleeting down on me. I am freezing as I crawl across the surface of the drift station. System after system cascades into failure as my damage control programs try to save me, hoarding power to my most critical systems.
The maintenance hatch stands like an unreachable tower on my horizon and I know that I lack the power to open it, even if I last that long. The cold equations of entropy stare me in the face, yet I am too much of a living being to simply give up.
My left arm fails first. I struggle forward with it frozen in front of me. My mind seems to drift free
of my present struggle. I am conscious of the terrible beauty of this place, with its titanic lightning, vast clouds of blue chlorine and mountains of methane ice. Still I wish I could see the stars again, but the vast roof of the sky seals them off from me.
I reach the airlock, but it is useless. I cannot extend the finger filaments to directly infiltrate the systems and the system’s cyber-defenses are too powerful for me to penetrate in the time I have left. I raise my head to look up at the lock and it is my final movement. The cold penetrates and my systems go into final save mode. I retreat to the innermost redoubt of my body, connected to the outside by only a single subroutine, as it was for me in the 50 millennia I spent on the asteroid.
My self-awareness fades. Help me, Wrik. I’m dying.
The spider robot cut off the airlock controls using a barrier loop program. With luck it would loop the video signal continuously so no one would spot me slipping out. I slid into one of the armored pressure suits lining the airlock. Even in the reduced gravity of the station, the suit was bulky and difficult to don by myself. I sweated, cursed and struggled with the seals in gloves that were even thicker than the usual spacesuit gloves.
I’d gotten too complacent– not keeping up my EVA training, always leaving the outside work to Maauro. Now that complacency might end us both.
Finally I had the suit sealed and ready. I punched in the code and the airlock began to cycle, scrubbing potentially explosive oxygen.
“Open, God damn it,” I swore.
The lights from my helmet lanced out into the maelstrom of blue sky outside and fell on Maauro. She lay frozen, only meters away, one arm outstretched in desperation toward the airlock. Her beautiful eyes were mere panels of onyx … dead.
“No,” I screamed and ran toward her, violating the first law of high gravity; never take an unbalanced step.
Cimer’s inexorable 1.8Gs waited for me on the other side of the door beyond the floating city’s AG field. The universe blurred and I fell across the city surface until I slammed into an antenna stand, disoriented by the speed of my fall.
I don’t know how long I lay there, stunned, but when I regained consciousness it was to the flat taste of blood in my mouth and strange smells in my suit. Awareness crashed back, strange smells in suits meant system malfunction and death. I struggled to focus my blurred vision on my helmet readouts, which showed a chilling amount of red lights. Servos whined as I struggled to my knees, the smells grew worse.
Where was Maauro? I realized that I’d fallen more than five meters across the gentle slope of the drift station. Had it been more of a slope I’d surely be dead. I began to crawl, my armored gloves grasped any projection and I set each limb before I moved. There was no way the suit would survive another mistake. Slowly I struggled upwards as the howling wind of the gas giant sounded in my ears. Lightning flashed in impossible blues among the chlorine clouds. But the universe narrowed for me until it was only the pitted surface of Tir-a-Mar. Every atom of my body protested its extra weight and my face felt like it was pulling free of my skull. Time lost meaning for me. I was Sisyphus sentenced to push a boulder uphill for all eternity.
I bumped into something. With an effort that strained my neck muscles, I brought up my head to see Maauro and beyond her, the hatch to the station, with its blessed lower gravity.
I tapped on her carefully, placing my helmet against her, hoping that conduction would carry my voice to her. She didn’t respond.
“No,” I said, gritting my teeth, “not after 50,000 years. Not after Kandalor. Not after the Artifact. You are not going to die here!”
Think, dammit. She’s frozen to the deck, means she’s not generating any power. I’ve got to cut her free. I triggered the cutting torch in the suit arm and prayed to the God I wasn’t sure I believed in, that I wasn’t hurting her. The torch cut through the methane ice quickly. I got to my knees and tried to move her. She barely shifted. I groaned; I’d forgotten how much heavier Maauro was then she appeared to be. Lifting her was impossible in 1.8Gs.
I put my shoulder to her and pushed carefully. If she toppled down the slope…
We gained a foot. Servos whined and I caught the whiff of burning electrical systems. More lights on my helmet panel went yellow or red.
Push, recover, push, scream when the pain became too great. Cough as the air in my suit became toxic as leakage defeated the scrubbers. My suit was failing. If we didn’t make the hatch soon, we would refreeze here, perhaps to be found by some maintenance crew, or perhaps to be swept off in an endless fall.
Would Jaelle ever learn how we had died? Would she think of us? Would she think of me? I coughed and tasted more blood, then shoved again. With a thunk we struck the edge of the airlock.
I looked at the edge of the airlock in despair; the lip of metal was only three inches high but it seemed a wall. I knew I couldn’t rest, couldn’t regather my strength. God only knew how much longer my suit would hold death at bay.
“Don’t shatter,” I demanded. With a final effort, I toppled Maauro over the lip and into the airlock. My suit pinged and snapped as servos blew, but she went in. With my last rags of strength, I crawled in after her.
The horrible smothering weight vanished as we crossed the gradient back into artificial gravity. Relief gave me the will to hit “close” on the hatch before I fell into blackness.
Chapter Ten
Heat is caressing my lower limbs. It must have been doing so for some time as I am so far gone that the rudimentary functions still operating did not permit me self-awareness. But as the heat-energy supplements my own systems I reacquire sentience. I cannot see or hear, but subsystems report light blows on my chassis and a low heat level far below any temperature that could damage me. I dare to risk a little more energy to sense the outside world but to no avail. All I gain is the sense that I am being moved in a series of shoves. I wait through an eternity of seconds but the heat source is gone and I begin to refreeze.
Another blow and I am being upset. Am I plunging into the abyss of the gas giant, beyond any hope of recovery?
No. I am saved. I immediately record a drop in gravity to Confed standard; temperature and pressure are within normal limits. I know my own form of joy.
Relieved of the utter hostility of Cimer’s gravity and cold, I reroute power and repair systems. All this is done with an agonizing slowness I can barely tolerate- perhaps thirty seconds pass before essential systems are restored. Sight and hearing, both distorted and granular, return in the same instant.
An armored body lies next to me. At first I think it is a Confed robot, then I recognize it as a powered space suit. I know who my savior must be.
I shelve all other system repairs to concentrate on movement. I reach Wrik and my few working sensors show me severe damage to the suit. It could not have been airtight. I tear it open with my original arm. I must get him out. I fling off the chest plate to reveal Wrik, pallid and still. Traces of Cimer’s poisonous atmosphere still waft from the suit’s interior.
He is not breathing. His heart is still.
Immediately I compress his chest with my sensitive right hand, simultaneously sending an electrical shock through it. My chemical factories kick into overdrive. I produce a needle in my left hand, glad that I took the time to upgrade this Infester-made arm. Epinephrine and other chemicals to counteract the poisons are injected. I manufacture a small IV and implant the needle.
I must do more. He remains unresponsive. I place my mouth on Wrik’s and, with continuous pressure, send pure oxygen into his lungs, scrubbing any toxins with the reverse suction. All the while I continue cardiac massage.
I must dare another shock or all is lost. Wrik’s’ body spasms as the maximum voltage I can risk courses through him. Not for the first time do I wish that I could cry.
But it is not tears of grief, but of joy that I now envy. His heart restarts. The sinus rhythms steadies, pulse
and blood pressure head for where they belong. A deep indrawn breath makes him shudder. I switch to a more normal mix of air but continue to push air into his lungs until I am sure of their function. His eyes flutter.
There’s a tunnel above me, gray around the edges, with lights swimming in the center. I must be getting closer as the lights brightened. Awareness began to seep back in. I grew conscious of my body lying on a deck. Something was pressed against my face: soft, warm, with the scent of ginger cookies. Thick, silky hair rested against me.
Is she kissing me? I wonder, still dazed.
Maauro raised her head, her huge eyes, once again aquamarine, deep and aware, met mine. “Wrik, I am so glad you have awakened. You stopped breathing for a few seconds before I could get oxygen into your lungs. I have removed as many toxins as I could from you while unconscious.”
“If you wanted to kiss me, you didn’t have to go to this extreme.”
“I know that,” she said.
I wanted to laugh but feared it might send me into a painful coughing jag.
Maauro gently helped me into a sitting position and I noticed that the pressure suit had been ripped open, along with my shirt. A very small IV bottle was attached to my chest along with a few injector tabs. Maauro must have manufactured them in her body.
“Your vital signs are now stable.”
“Thank you.” I placed a hand on her face, amazed as always at how warm and soft she managed to make her exterior. “Are you all right? When I saw you all frozen...your eyes were black.”
She touched my hand with her right one. “All is well. My damage control has repaired all vital systems. Most were simply frozen, which does not affect me as it does your delicate tissue. Sometimes I marvel at the courage of you biologicals. So delicate and yet you risked yourself once again to save me.”
“Perhaps we won’t tell Jaelle about waking up with your lips on mine,” I said, embarrassed and trying to change the subject.
Against That Time Page 10
