by J. N. Chaney
“They are, sir. If you are attempting to dehumanize them to ease your guilt, I advise against it. That will have long-term consequences for your psychological health.”
“Damn, X. It was just a question. I was getting ready to say you seem more human than they are.”
“That would be a false assumption. I am a limited artificial intelligence, restricted by the amount of hardware and software your body can hold.”
A spray of bullets peppered the wall near me, causing me to trip and fall. I hit the ground hard, cursing as I made an unmanly sound. It was hard for me to break bones, but this type of injury still hurt like the devil.
“That felt great.”
“Sarcasm detected.”
“For the record, X, I don’t need to dehumanize my victims to kill them. Everyone dies. They just die a lot sooner when they try to eat me.”
“Shall I note that in your mission log?”
I scrambled forward, briefly considering the pros and cons of returning fire. Crawling seemed a better option. When I reached an intersection, I took the first left and struggled to my feet.
“Good choice,” X-37 said. “Schematics show this will take you away from your pursuers.”
“How do I get back to Hastings and the kid?”
“You will be unable to reach Doctor Hastings, his daughter, or Lieutenant Grady.”
“Give me some good news.”
“These side tunnels are well-maintained. There is a high probability you will encounter civilians.”
“Thanks, but the locals haven’t exactly been much use so far.”
“After careful analysis of past events and your current desire to remain among the living, my recommendation is to ask for help. Nicely.”
“Thanks, X. I’ll keep that in mind. Will you please just help me navigate my way through this shit hole?”
“Why certainly, Reaper Cain. It would be my pleasure.”
The passageway turned three more times before I felt like I’d lost my pursuers. Slowing to a walk, I found my water tube, pulled it forward, and took a long drink.
“Your injuries require attention.”
On any other day, I’d have a catchy rejoinder, but I was just too tired. Every muscle, joint, and bone in my body ached. I climbed the next two access ladders and looked for the dropship. Grady was no longer running overwatch from the vehicle and I thought it was as likely to gun me down as pick me up.
But if it was still orbiting Dreadmax, then it was still looking for the Hastings family. I had no illusions the Union would go out of its way to rescue the rest of us. Elise was possibly an exception. If she was an unwitting experiment, then someone would want to study her at least.
My own experience with being a prototype had left a bad taste in my mouth. We’d all been extremely motivated to fight for the Union when we joined the Reaper Corps. It occurred to me as I descended one of the ladders back to the sub-level passage that if there was a reason we had been disbanded, it was probably a good one.
A voice spoke from a speaker box at the bottom of the ladder. “Hey, mister.”
Habit forced me to check the area around me for threats even as I answered. If this was the same kid who’d been watching me on the camera before, he probably thought I was extremely paranoid.
“What’s up, kid? Can you find me a way out of here?”
“Name’s Bug. What you want out of here for? I don’t see no crazies or gangs. You could get to the farms from here or to the shipyard, and I ain’t talking about the Red Skull Gangster crib. That hangar won’t ever do nothing but collect loot.”
“Why would I want to go to the shipyard?”
“People are nice there. All they do is work on stuff. Gangs don’t bother them ‘cause they check on the gravity generators. Kind of keep things working. My sister and a couple of my cousins went to them. Haven’t heard no bad stories, so they must be all right,” Bug said.
“Can you tell me what’s up ahead or how to get out of here?”
“You didn’t say ‘please.’ My mom and dad used to say that was important. Always say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ And don’t eat people or touch open wires.”
The boy on the other side of the speaker box was eating noisily, probably chips or crackers… or bugs? The picture jumped into my brain and couldn’t be unseen.
“It’s been nice talking to you. Have places to be.”
“Yeah, yeah. You look busy now that your friends left you. Why do you talk to yourself?”
“Long story. What are you eating?”
“Orange crackers. They’re supposed to taste like cheese, but I don’t really know what that means. Very popular. Watching you is a special event. I broke open my stash.”
The passage grew quiet, forcing me to accept how vast Dreadmax was and how easy it would be to get lost forever. “Help me out, Bug.”
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. “Sure thing, mister. Just keep going the direction you’re facing. We’ll watch for you at the next camera junction. Won’t be able to see you in all of these hallways, but wherever there’s a door, there is a talk box and a security. My friends agree you should go to the hangar.”
“Friends.”
“Bugs like me.”
“Why not the farms? Maybe I could get something to eat.”
“No one ever comes back from the farms. And they don’t really have crackers.”
“I thought you said no one ever comes back from the farms. How do you know they don’t have orange crackers?” I asked, moving and watching for the next thing that would kill me.
“I go wherever I want. I’m a Bug.”
“Interesting. Do you see my friends?”
“Sometimes. But they’re far away. Must not like you. Take the next right, the third surface ladder will take you near the hangar. That’s the way you should go.”
“What’d you think, X?”
“The child’s suggestion matches the available schematics. What do you have to lose?”
“Thanks, X.”
“Hey, mister, are you talking to us or yourself?”
“Do you have cameras and intercoms among the hangar people you think are awesome?”
“Yeah, but they don’t like us to talk so much. Since they’re nice and don’t tear up our stuff, we try to be polite. Say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and mostly shut up.”
“Would you tell me what my friends are doing from time to time?”
“Sure thing, mister. That sounds like fun. Shut up, asshole!” the boy yelled at someone on his end of the commlink. “I’m fucking talking to the mister! My oranges! Stupid shitbag.”
“Sounds like trouble in Bug land.”
“You don’t know the half of it, mister. I found those crackers myself. Bobby thinks he can take what he wants because he’s bigger. I’ll fucking shank him in his sleep… yeah, I’m talking to you, Bobby!”
The voice on the box faded as I ran into the darkness. I took Bug’s advice as he argued with his friends and found my way to the dry docks and hangars I’d seen during our approach to Dreadmax.
The facilities looked entirely different from the deck. None of them looked flight-worthy, but the people worked on them tirelessly. Day and night and mostly in secret, they were doing the impossible business of salvaging even a single ship able to leave this place.
Mingling with the workers, I scouted the area before sitting on a crate to rest. An electric current, barely noticeable, pulsed from my augmented arm, through my shoulder, and toward my spine. The static in my vision was more noticeable. Every bone in my body ached from the stress I’d put on them over the last few hours.
Dark thoughts occurred to me during the rare moments of rest. This was how I’d be forever. No one from the Union was going to fix my Reaper hardware. The chance of upgrading was little more than a fantasy I’d used to keep me sane during long days and nights in the BSMP.
Fighting for survival pushed minor miseries into the background. I should have been thankful, but I was ju
st exhausted and not feeling like giving a fuck.
“Are you certain you actually need this much rest, Reaper Cain?”
“Can you show a little compassion, X?”
“Not without an upgrade.”
“Don’t freak me out, X.”
“Apologies, Reaper Cain. What are you implying?”
“I was just thinking about the impossibility of getting my gear upgraded, and then you say the same thing. Feels like you’re reading my mind.”
“Impossible, sir. That is merely your perception of coincidence.”
“Uh-huh. Dishonesty detected,” I said.
“That’s my line, Reaper Cain.” Something clicked where X-37 stimulated the cochlea of my inner ear to communicate with me. “The scientists who developed Reaper tech spent several years striving for and evaluating the possibility of an AI or limited AI with the ability to read the hosts’ thoughts and found it to be impossible. Eventually, they abandoned pursuit of this goal after realizing that if achieved, it would do more harm than good.”
“I’m going to believe you for now.”
“Very good, Reaper Cain. Just remember all such occurrences are random. As a human, you interpret coincidence as cause.”
“I’m sorry I started this conversation.”
“Shall I mark it for later discussion?”
“No. I’ll remember. Now shut the hell up. I need to make some decisions.”
I found one of the gravity generators and saw there was a full-time crew monitoring it. One of them had a pistol, but none of them were guards. The RSG could wipe them out in an hour if they wanted to. I wasn’t sure what prevented the crazies from overrunning the place with raw numbers.
“Can I help you, stranger?” one of the engineers asked, wiping his greasy hands on his coveralls like he would shake my hand. “Name’s Peter.”
I kept my distance but tried not to scare him. “Where’s your security element?”
He backed away, not afraid, but definitely cautious. It seemed like most of the people here had their capacity for fear burned away.
“You’re not with the Dreadmax soldiers? I thought you looked different. They were talking about getting real uniforms a while back, but I still think they just look like someone drew a silhouette of the station on their shoulder patches.”
“Dreadmax soldiers?”
“Some of them were actual soldiers, or soldiers of some type. Seems like they were just drawn together by common experience at first, but they patrol now. Help keep our hangar safe. No one wants the gravity generators or power to fail.”
“Interesting.”
“The DM escort us when we have to go offsite to work on something. Real lifesavers.”
“Where are they now?”
He shrugged. “Do you mind if I ask who you are, stranger?”
“Halek Cain. I’m new.”
“Figured that much. As long as you don’t interfere with our work or mess with the children, you’re welcome among us. You have to pull your weight, though. Whatever skills you have will be appreciated.”
“Doubtful,” X-37 whispered.
“I hear you, Peter. Don’t worry about me. I’m not staying long. Do any of these ships work?”
“Just the smaller ones, like the Jellybird. Don’t go near them. That will get you shot. We’ve only got so many smugglers to bring supplies.”
I stared across the hangar, spotting the functional ships immediately now that I knew they existed. A lot of work had been spent making them appear inoperable. There was a decent chance Peter was living in a dreamworld and none of them worked, but I filed the information for later.
“How many people can one of those functional ships carry? Do they have slip drives?”
“I’m not sure I should talk about that.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not a pilot,” I lied.
“Oh, well, I don’t see the harm in telling you the rest. The smuggler ships can’t get more than a few of us off this place, so we were told not to think about it or talk about it. Better if no one starts fighting over them. As for the slip drive regulators, they can’t be retrofitted to the freighters. I’m not sure why. I’m just a glorified mechanic.”
“Thanks, Peter.”
“Hey, Cain. Stay away from the Jellybird and the Hopper. Seriously. The DM will shoot you before you make it halfway.”
“No worries, Peter. You be safe.”
He nodded and went back to work.
11
I FOUND a water tap and drank until I thought I’d drown. Food was something else, nearly impossible to find even with the acceptance of the hangar engineers and their families. The few people I encountered looked like they were on a starvation diet and it didn’t feel right to take anything from them, so I didn’t ask.
Aside from Peter the mechanic, they weren’t a very talkative group. I didn’t blame them for keeping their distance. My body was smeared with gods knew what. Field bandages couldn’t be hidden with this cheap gear. My Reaper armor had tourniquets and pressure bandages internal to the armor—press a button and, voila, I could fight for a few more minutes or days before I bled out.
The shit Briggs had authorized for this mission was ancient, something straight out of a museum.
The outskirts of the shipyards were a lot like the neighborhood around the RSG stronghold, full of quiet, desperate people that were afraid of strangers. I saw a squad of Dreadmax soldiers from a distance. They moved like pros and watched each other’s backs. I wondered if they were convicted murders or political prisoners.
Not that it mattered.
The Union put them here and probably wanted them to die when the station failed.
“Can I ask you a question, X?”
“Yes.”
“What is the difference between the Dreadmax soldiers and the Red Skull Gangsters?”
“Everything,” X-37 said.
“Thanks. That was really helpful.”
“If I had to choose one personality attribute to differentiate them, it would be the ability to think long term. The RSG live only for immediate survival. Each of them want to be as high on the food chain as possible. The DM are more organized. They do what they know. It is likely that some of them went over to the gangs. The value of our conclusions are limited by the sample size of our not very scientific observations.”
“You’re right, X. As long as they stay out of my way, we should be fine.”
“Perhaps they could help us.”
“Not worth the risk. Not yet.”
“Noted. Perhaps you should check in with Bug.”
“Sure thing, X. Just let me watch the normal people for a while longer.”
Kids climbed over pipes someone had welded into a jungle gym and painted bright colors. Nearly everything else in the place was gray metal or black grease. Fathers, uncles, and older brothers worked on a dissembled forklift taken apart nearby. They were acting like they wanted nothing to do with the women gathered around their own project, but it was clearly a competition of some sort while the children ran around screaming like they were playing cannibals and gangbangers.
“It’s time to go, Reaper Cain,” X-37 said.
Thoughts of the children and their families stayed with me as I put as much distance between myself and the shipyards as possible. Bug was probably right. The people there would help me, maybe keep me as long as I could pull my weight.
But they were builders and I was a destroyer.
"Are you in one of your moods?" X-37 asked.
"Are you chastising me?"
"One of my key functions is to regulate your hormones and monitor your vitals. Your heart rate and respiration suggest you're unhappy."
"I'm only human, X."
"You're a Reaper."
"I was a Reaper. Now I’m just some jerk-off running from the inevitable."
"My recommendation is to focus on one thing at a time. The people of Dreadmax may need to fend for themselves."
"They're all gonna die, X
. Now or when the next level of Dreadmax fails. Or when they try to take one of those ships out of the system."
"You can't do anything about that now. What you can do is evade the Red Skull Gangsters and the Nightfall Gangsters moving into this area, in case you weren't paying attention. Which you weren't," X-37 said.
The first thug I saw was an NG, dressed more like a lower level crazy than one of the rival gang, the RSG. He wore a battered jumpsuit with furs sewn into it. Pieces of metal protected his chest, one of his arms, and his shins.
“Where did he get furs, X?”
“Let’s assume he’s been to the agricultural level and that there are still animals. More likely what you’re seeing are rat pelts. Or—”
“Scalps.”
“What manner of clothing the Nightfall Gangster wears is irrelevant.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said, studying more important details like the surprisingly elegant rifle that was longer than the man was tall. He was wearing a mask that concealed everything about his face except for his crazy, doped-up or drunk eyes.
"You stop for the Nightfall Gang. We kill you if you don’t,” he barked.
Snapping my HDK into place, I fired as part of the same movement. I was fast, even for a Reaper. The optical enhancements of my cybernetic left eye—even at seventy-percent functionality—gave me greater depth perception with or without the infrared function activated. I was a damn good shot because I didn’t hesitate to go for the kill.
The NG dropped out of view, wailing an undulating cry as he circled behind metal boxes and pipes covering the top deck.
“Play that back, X. I thought I plugged him in the chest.”
“Correct. He won’t live long.”
Dozens of other NG answered his call. From another direction, I heard vehicles and the slightly more understandable curses of the Red Skull Gangsters.
"You are being surrounded," X-37 said.
"But at least I'm running out of ammunition and starving."
"Sarcasm detected. If you continue twenty-five meters, there is a hatch the schematics suggest will lead you out of this predicament. Temporarily, at least."
"Thanks, X." I ran for it, realizing again how alone and under-equipped I was.
