by Dan Davis
Earth is water world.
“Ram? Can you hear me?” R1’s voice in his ear. “You have to act, Ram, your vitals are dropping.”
“It’s for us,” Ram said, his tongue sounding thick in his unfamiliar mouth. “The water is for us.”
“Say again, Ram?”
Taking a deep breath, Ram roared another war cry and charged straight at the alien. It jerked in surprise and rose up, raising its razor legs like a mantis. Before he got into striking range, Ram changed direction and splashed his way into the shallow pool on one side, lifting his long legs high as he ran. It surprised and confused the hex just for a moment and maybe frightened it too because it scuttled back to reposition itself. The momentary hesitation was all he needed to change direction once again and close the distance in just two great strides, spraying water as he did so.
He wrapped his arms around as many of the legs as he could reach and heaved it up. Muscles strained and tendons tore with audible pops and pain racked him but he felt the hex lifting up and over. Its legs flailed and thrashed him and resisted but he bent his knees, relieving the pressure for just a moment before heaving once more with every fiber of his being.
The hex fell and Ram fell with him. They crashed into the deep water and the Hex flailed its legs for the side. It loosened its grip on Ram’s body and used some of its legs to reach of the smooth sides of the pool, while others thrashed below, whipping up the water as it tried to propel itself to the surface. Ram wrapped his legs around those of the Hex and held on.
Moaning and wailing, the hex seemed to be screaming from whatever organ inside the thorax it used for such communication. He could feel it resonating on the carapace as well as through the water, though the sound of his own heartbeat hammering in his ears was just as loud.
Ram had already been exhausted and breathing heavily when they went under and his body demanded he take a breath. His blood would be laden with carbon dioxide and his muscles and brain were screaming for oxygen. How long would it take the hex to drown, Ram wondered.
Which one of them would die first?
Together they continued to sink deeper. It was light enough to see by but the blood and alien ichor in the water was starting to turn it murky and the frantic thrashing of the hex’s sewing needle legs turned it into a sea of tiny white bubbles, swirling all around in a maelstrom.
And then it changed. Instead of trying to throw Ram off and swim for the surface, the hex began pull him in closer. Ram fought back but found himself being fed inward through the tangle of legs and up into the underside of the thorax where the hex’s great maw could slice through his bones. Even with the chaotic submerged sounds, Ram could hear the mandibles clacking. Bracing himself against the carapace, he held on with everything he had while his blood throbbed in his ears and his head ached. His lungs burned and everything in his body now urged him to breathe, to take a breath, to open his mouth and suck in.
It yanked him suddenly and Ram felt one elbow pop as it dislocated and he could not help but exhale half a lungful of air before he stopped himself from sucking in the deadly water. The snapped arm lost its grip and he was fed closer to the clacking mandibles right over his head. With his working arm, he tried to brace himself on the underside but instead the hex sucked him in and he felt his hand slip up inside the razor-sharp teeth and the hex bit down on his forearm with terrific force. There was barely any resistance before it sliced through the bones.
Inside the jaws of the hex, Ram had enough sensation in his half-severed arm to feel some sort of soft, sucking organ inside tugging at his limb. Some sort of wet sphincter muscle pulling him in further and something like an enormous prehensile tongue caressing his flesh at the point of the amputation.
Pain and horror shot through Ram and he instinctively pulled back.
But the hex had him fast now and the sucking maw took a wet gulp and the suction pulled him in deeper, past the elbow and the enormous alien jaws closed around his arm and sliced through the skin and muscles before clamping on the humerus itself. There, it found resistance in the body’s incredibly dense bone. Thicker than the radius and ulna, it seemed enough to stop the powerful mandibles. But they worked their way back and forth, grinding through the bone like a pipe cutter. In no time, it would be through and then Ram would be swiftly and thoroughly dismembered.
Through all the panic and fear, a single thought struck him.
I’m going to die.
But it was worse than that, he realized.
I’m going to lose.
Ram’s feet kicked against the bottom of the pool and the momentum carried them further down until Ram pushed off instinctively against the floor, shoving with his powerful legs. The hex did the same but not with the same force and their collective effort served to tip them over. Ram was pulled sideways so his legs came up, as did the hex’s flailing bundle of limbs. It was top-heavy, Ram realized, and without the legs having a firm footing was in danger of tipping over, going upside down.
The hex did not want that. Ram did not know why, exactly, but he could sense the hex’s panic at tipping over on the bottom. Perhaps it feared being trapped beneath Ram’s heavy body and unable to right itself and reach the surface or perhaps it was something more fundamental or instinctual but it released Ram’s arm and loosened its grip on the rest of him as its legs whisked at the water and thrashed against the smooth floor.
Ram knew that whatever the hex did not want, was something he should try to make happen. And his vision was growing dark and his legs and arms were weakening. The oxygen in his blood and brain had been almost entirely utilized and the carbon dioxide was saturating his blood. The urge to breathe in could not be resisted any longer. Even if he managed to control it, the Co2 build-up would result in a blackout at which point he would drown anyway.
He pushed off against the underside of the thorax so that he shot upward towards the surface, desperate to take just a single breath. But the legs grabbed him and pulled him back down. He twisted and with his one remaining arm, broken though it was, he struck the maw with his fist. It was hard to punch underwater, and it caused no damage. Striking was no good but leverage still worked so he grasped one of the great mandibles with his hand, placed his feet either side of the maw, and heaved back.
To his astonishment, the mandible snapped immediately and came off in his hand in a cloud of black ichor. The hex screamed and thrashed in panic, the legs whipping against Ram. But he shrugged them off and went for the other mandible, grasping it and heaving up. They worked by slicing inward across each other over the mouth opening but Ram realized now that they had almost no ability to move in any other plane. The second one snapped off as the hex thrashed and rolled through the water. Great bubbles came streaming from its bleeding mouth and Ram stomped a foot down into that sucking hole, causing another stream of bubbles to billow out. He did not know which way was up and how much of his body was working. It was almost impossible to see and Ram knew he was about to die. He would drown and his heart would stop and his brain would degrade as he died.
But the hex was dying too and had been for some time. Only now, when its legs twitched and stopped moving, did he realize that those legs had been slowing and weakening since falling into the water. The agony of his arm and the pain of asphyxiation and his other injuries had stopped him noticing but it was true. Falling from his body, the hex legs floated in the murky water like a bundle of loose cables. Ram shook them from him on his way to the surface.
His head broke through into the air and he heaved in a great, shuddering breath. Water sprayed everywhere and he struggled toward the side, any side, where he could climb out. But he was missing an arm and the other was broken and weak and his body was covered everywhere in lacerations down to the bone. Enormous quantities of toxins had been transported through his blood to his organs and the damage had taken its toll.
He could barely see, nothing more than vague shapes and light and that much only on one side. It was a miracle he was even movin
g, slow and agonizing as it was. Somehow, Ram reached a shallow section of the pool and reached out with his broken arm. He lacked the strength to pull himself out and so he gave up to lay in the shallows until he couldn’t hold his head up anymore. With great effort, he rolled onto his back. It hurt to breathe but he knew he did not have many breaths left in him.
With his remaining hand, Ram felt his belly and found that his intestines had burst from his abdomen and were trailing in the water. His chest was more lacerations than it was skin and his fingers slid against bone. His face, Henry’s face, was a ruin. It seemed as though one side of that face had been sliced off and certainly one eye was entirely gone. His hand had no strength left and it flopped down with a splash beside him and he felt himself sliding back into the water.
Voices shouted at him. Human voices. Everything was black but he felt hands on him and people calling his name.
As he died, Ram smiled.
Because he had done it.
He had won.
28.
The void, again. Dreams running together in an endless stream. Voices whispering a thousand light years away. Showers of digits fell, zeroes, nines, pouring in a river over him and into his mouth and nose, suffocating him, drowning him. He did not mind. Time passed.
And Rama Seti woke.
“Ram? Can you hear me? Rama Seti, are you conscious?” A woman's voice. He recognized it, certainly. A distant voice, right in his ear. “You can hear me, can’t you, Ram?”
Another voice spoke, a man, a stranger. “He shows every sign of being able to hear us but he’s still not responding.”
“What do you think it means?”
“It may mean nothing at all.”
“Or he may be locked in. What if he’s locked in forever?”
“That would be unfortunate.”
He felt hands on him. Shaking him. “Ram, come on, come back to us.” A sigh. Breath on his face. “Can’t you give him something else?”
“We’ve given him three times the recommended dose.”
The woman scoffed. “The AI-recommended dose, maybe. Give him another.”
“But—
“That’s an order.” She sighed again, only this time it was more of a growl. “It’s on record, you bloody coward, if he dies it’s my responsibility, so just give him the fucking dose.”
People busied themselves around him and he winced and blinked until the form leaning over him came slowly into focus.
Ram recognized her. “Kat?” he tried to say but nothing came out.
Bright white light filled his vision and he moaned, shielding his eyes.
“Ram!” Kat said, grasping his shoulders. “You alright? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Turn the light down,” Ram said, mumbling.
It got darker and he heard laughter and when Kat spoke, he heard the smile in her voice. “What do you remember?”
“Showers of digits tumbling. Drowning me.”
“Uh-oh,” the man’s voice said. “Showing signs of confusion.”
“Quiet,” Kat hissed. “He’s bound to be, isn’t he? Now, shut up.” In her normal voice, she spoke to Ram again. “Drowning, right. Do you remember the fight in the arena?”
“Course I do,” Ram muttered. “It was praying. Didn’t like the deep water. Drowned myself.”
Kat laughed. “It worked.”
“What worked?”
“Can you open your eyes?”
“Don’t want to. It hurts.”
“I know. It’s dark now. Come on, open your eyes.”
He was in a medical bay, like so many he had seen before, lying on his back looking up at a white ceiling and faces leaning over, looking down at him. The room was very dim but he could see Kat’s teeth gleaming in the reflected glow of the instrument screens around them.
“My body,” Ram said, trying and failing to move his arms and look down.
“It’s yours,” Kat said, grinning. “Your genes, your clone. They grew a new one from your genome on file and transferred your mind. It’s only ever been done experimentally before but they did it anyway because of everything you’ve done. All you’ve achieved.”
“Am I normal? You can’t keep transferring consciousness, something always gets lost and they become a drooling idiot—”
A new voice spoke and she stepped forward into sight, looking down with a smile.
“R1?”
“Hello, Ram. You did it. I knew you would.”
“Is this real? Or have I gone mad?”
They smiled at each other over him.
R1 spoke. “Brain scans and other tests show it’s been a complete success. And the fact that you even remember your very last moments of consciousness is incredibly encouraging.”
“How?”
“There is something unique about your biology and your mind. There are lots of hypotheses but we aren’t certain exactly why. It seems you’ve done it again. We pulled your mind out of Henry’s brain and it is intact. You’re you, that’s all that matters. You’re you again.”
“Why can’t I move? You paralyzed me?”
“We’ll release the lock now.”
Ram felt his head swim and his body twitched. Raising his hands he looked at them closely. They looked like his hands again. Massive but not gigantic, light brown and not pale, his fingers were strong and straight, not long and gnarled.
One side of the room was a wide, dark window, like the room beyond was in perfect darkness, which turned the window in a mirror, reflecting the large room and all the people in it.
He laughed. “I want to stand.”
His bed hummed beneath him and he rose into an upright, seated position. He wore a loose hospital robe and nothing else. Struggling to get up, they helped him stand and supported him from either side as he took a step forward. They shouldn’t have been strong enough but they seemed able to hold him with ease. His head swam and he felt like he was going to float up to the ceiling.
Turning toward the window, he half-bounced toward it, straightening up and feeling stronger with every step.
“I feel light as a feather,” he said.
He looked at himself, walking forward in the reflection. Towering over Kat on one side and R1 on the other, he looked like Rama Seti.
“I’m me again,” he said. “But… am I… smaller?”
“Oh, yes,” R1 said. “They made your final height and mass to be within the normal human range, although at the extreme end of it and still taller than you were in your very first body. I believe they wanted to retain your larger than life effect but also allow you a more normal existence.” She blushed as she said it and lowered her face.
Kat smiled. “You used to be six-foot-five and then your clone for the wheeler fight was eight-foot five now you’re something like seven-five, Ram.” She shrugged. “So, think of it as average… for you.”
They were all smiles but Ram felt a powerful ache when he thought of Henry. First, he had given his mind and then finally he had sacrificed his body. Ram had spent everything he had trying to connect with that body, to become one with it, to accept it for what it was and to become one with it. And now it was gone. He had what he wanted, victory, and his old body back. Or a copy of it, at least. But the feeling of loss was so powerful he almost fell down and took a sedate step forward and leaned a hand on the black window.
“Woah there, big guy,” Kat said. “Best you sit for a while until you’re in sync with yourself again.”
“I’m in sync. I’m fine. What happened? How long has it been?”
R1 answered the second question first. “More than three years.”
“After you killed that bastard, we recovered your body and your brain. We oxygenated it right away and there was almost no damage. That body, though, was shredded and filled with toxins, and just basically destroyed. It was a bag of bloody bones. The team worked round the clock for days and saved your memories but that body was beyond saving.”
That body.
&
nbsp; “Henry’s body,” Ram said. “What happened to it?”
“We held a memorial service.”
“Stirling?” Ram said, blurting it out. “What happened to Stirling?”
“He lost consciousness shortly after you won in the arena and died three days later. He wasn’t in pain by that point.”
Ram stood up straight. “No new body for him?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sure, I get it. I’m a propaganda tool.”
“You’re a bloody hero. You saved us, twice over. Anyone would do anything for you. This was the least they could do.”
“What about the Hex? What about the war?”
“Orb Station Alpha closed up the wormhole so there’s no more reinforcements for the Hex forces in the Sol System. So we’ve been taking back what we lost, bit by bit.”
“Where are we, Lieutenant Commander?” Ram asked, looking around at the size and shape of the room. “This isn’t the Hereward.”
“It’s not the Hereward, no,” she said and tapped a finger against an insignia on the collar of her working uniform. “And my rank is Captain Xenakis now, thank you very much, Lieutenant.”
With that, Kat walked toward the side of the window and tapped on a control panel. The way she moved was very odd, with a strange loping bound.
The black mirror in front of him was broken across the center as a white horizon sliced through. Two shutters opened, revealing the mirror to be a window. As they peeled up into the ceiling and down into the floor, Ram had to squint and cover his eyes at the brightness beyond. But his eyes quickly adjusted and he realized it wasn’t very bright outside at all. In fact, it was rather dim. And rocky. There were a few buildings scattered out there and beyond was a ridge line of jagged hills. The horizon was noticeably closer than it was on Earth. Ram recognized where he was at once.
“This is Mars,” he said.
Kat was grinning from ear to ear. “What a battle. We came in from multiple directions at once behind a barrage you wouldn’t believe. We hit their orbital stations and their bases on Phobos and Deimos and our ground teams working in coordination with resistance fighters rounded up thousands of Hex on the surface. And the Hex fleet ran. They barely contested it and retreated to Earth.”
